Militants Battle Nigerian Forces

Militants battled Nigerian armed forces in the country's southern oil region Saturday and threatened to launch reprisal raids on the oil infrastructure in Africa's biggest crude producer.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told The Associated Press in a statement that the Nigerian army and navy attacked their positions in a surprise raid on Rivers State, pouring in ground troops from landing craft and bombing their fighters from jet planes and helicopters. They said three militants were killed.

Lt. Col. Sagir Musa of the military task force charged with calming the restive oil region confirmed an armed engagement Saturday, saying it was a response to an ambush by militants. Musa, however, said aircraft were only providing reconnaisance and had no details on casualties.

The militants vowed they would retaliate for the raid by striking back against Nigeria's oil industry, Africa's largest, and warned foreign workers to vacate the southern Niger Delta.

"Oil companies are warned to move out their workers within the next 24 hours because a hurricane is about to sweep through oil installations in the entire Niger Delta region," the statement said.

The militants are behind nearly three years of rising violence in the southern Niger Delta. They say their deeply impoverished areas haven't benefited from five decades of oil production and they're agitating for more federally held oil funds to be sent to the southern oil states.The government acknowledges the grievances of many in the southern Niger Delta, but denounces the militants as criminals who use their struggle as a cover to make money from stealing crude oil and sell it overseas.

Corrupt government officials, however, also siphon off and sell oil and many state-level politicians are linked to the militants and other armed gangs, who they hire to rig elections.The militants said in recent weeks they had attacked a military outpost, killing 29 military personnel in response to alleged killings of civilians. The government denied that any attacks took place.

The accounts couldn't be independently verified.Still, large-scale battles between the militants and military are rare. While military often skirmishes with gunmen during chance encounters, it has avoided launching fuller-scale attacks on militant camps and other positions.For their part, the militants generally avoid the armed forces in the region, sticking to the back creeks of the delta and focusing their violence on the oil industry.Neither side appears to seek a full-blown civil war.

Analysts see a wider armed struggle as a nightmare scenario for Nigeria's oil infrastructure, which is largely unguarded and vulnerable to sabotage by militants who frequently destroy pipelines and cut production. That sends the price of oil higher in international markets.