Niger Delta fighting eases

Fighting eased in the Niger Delta Saturday after clashes with rebels in which the army freed six Filipinos and four Nigerians held hostage aboard a ship, the military and witnesses said.

"The cordon and search operation is still continuing on Saturday but at a lower scale," Colonel Rabe Abubakar, spokesman for the special military task force in the volatile oil-producing region of southern Nigeria, told AFP.

"Yesterday, we succeeded in destroying a key camp of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and routed them," he added.

A journalist in the oil city of Warri, about two hours by car from the scene of the clashes, also said that fighting seemed to have lessened early Saturday.

"Yesterday, it was like a war situation. We saw smoke billowing out of Gbaramatu area where the fighting was going on.

"But today, so far, things have abated. It looks like the military have the upper hand," the journalist said.

The hostages, seized on Wednesday, were freed overnight by the Nigerian army, Abubakar said earlier Saturday.

"We were able to secure the hijacked ship, MV Spirit, a chartered oil tanker. In the night, we rescued all the sailors on board the ship. We freed all the six Filipinos and four Nigerians on board.".

He said that many of the militants were killed by the troops, but declined to give figures.

He also said that a quantity of arms and ammunition as well as an aircraft were recovered during the operation.

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