Rights Group: Nigerian Military Raid Kills 150

A Nigerian military attack using heavily armed soldiers and aerial bombing runs has killed as many as 150 people in the oil-rich southern delta, a human rights activist said Friday.

Oghebejabor Ikim, national coordinator for the Forum of Justice and Human Rights Defense, told The Associated Press civilians have suffered a heavy toll in the military operation that began Wednesday. He did not say how many of the 150 dead were civilians, but said militants left the area before the offensive began.

The attacks on a village in the Niger Delta continued Friday as the military tried to kill or capture a militant called John Togo who officials said gave up on a government-sponsored amnesty program. The amnesty program for militants brought an uneasy calm to a region vital to U.S. oil supplies, which is now threatened by new militant attacks and government offensives that put civilians at risk.

"I can describe it as a killing spree of innocent civilians," Ikim said. "Houses have been burnt. Women are raped. There are killings. Is that how to get at John Togo?"

A military spokesman said Friday that the operation was ongoing, but declined to comment further. The military has declined to offer a death toll for the operation targeting the village of Ayakoromo and surrounding communities.

An independent assessment of the damage and casualties from the attack has yet to be done. The Nigerian Red Cross and other activists have been unable to reach the targeted communities as the military has sealed off the winding muddy creeks that lead to the region. Activists say they continue to see smoke rising from the area and can hear gunfire.

Video aired Thursday afternoon on the state-run Nigerian Television Authority showed soldiers in flak jackets and helmets traveling by boat through the muddy creeks. The network also showed images of what appeared to be suspected militants in custody and of a soldier setting a hut ablaze with a lighter.

Lt. Col. Timothy Antigha, a military spokesman, previously said soldiers recovered anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic rifles and dynamite from the three camps targeted in the attack.

However, it appears that soldiers have yet to apprehend Togo. Casely Omon-Irabor, a lawyer representing Togo, said Friday that the militant and his fighters were "far away in the high seas" and not in the region being attacked. The lawyer said the government had planned a meeting to negotiate a settlement with Togo, but instead launched a military operation against him.

"I do not see any reason why we are calling for truce and trying to get peace and yet a party for that peace has breached that agreement and gone into war again in the creeks," Omon-Irabor told the AP.

Militants in the Niger Delta have attacked pipelines, kidnapped petroleum company employees and fought government troops since an insurgency began in 2006. The attacks cut drastically into crude production in Nigeria, an OPEC-member nation that is one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the U.S. Production has risen back to 2.2 million barrels of oil a day, in part because many militant leaders and fighters accepted the amnesty deal.

But not all have been pacified. The main militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, has promised to carry out new attacks after claiming responsibility for kidnapping seven expatriate workers in November from offshore oil rigs operated by London-based Afren PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp. The group, known by the acronym MEND, also claimed a dual car bombing that killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens more during an Oct. 1 independence celebration in Nigeria's capital, Abuja.