MEND claims responsibility for attack, threatens further actions

A Niger Delta based militant has claimed responsibility for an attack on a police checkpoint that killed four persons. This is its second such claim after it said it blew up an oil pipeline last month. “The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) confirms that the attack on a Nigerian marine police checkpoint on Thursday March 1, 2012, in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta … was carried out by our fighters,” the statement from Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for one of MEND’s outpost, said.
He said they were in contact with the group which had kidnapped three people in a pirate attack on a Dutch vessel on Tuesday and were considering taking them in.. MEND has been largely inactive since most of its militants agreed an amnesty with the government in 2009, ending a wave of attacks that at one stage cut oil production down by half. But last month the group reappeared when it said it had attacked an oil pipeline owned by Italian firm Eni. “MEND wishes to sound a warning to masters of oil industry vessels considering adopting manoeuvers aimed at preventing our fighters from boarding their vessels,” the statement said. “We will launch rockets at … uncooperative vessels, and ensure such vessels are set alight, when we eventually board.”