Twenty one Cameroonian soldiers were killed and six injured in an attack by suspected militants in the Niger Delta in the Bakassi peninsula.
Details of the clash remain unclear. Cameroonian military sources alleged that the attackers wore Nigerian military uniforms and ambushed a boat. But the Nigerian military are blaming militants from the volatile Niger Delta for the attack.
The Niger Delta lies just west of the sensitive and oil-rich peninsular. Nigeria handed the Bakassi peninsula over to Cameroon more than a year ago in compliance with a ruling by the International Court of Justice.
The Nigerian Army said the raid could have been carried out by the same group of gunmen that had earlier attacked a nearby oil terminal run by Exxon Mobil.
If so, this will be the first time that Nigerian militants have attacked Cameroonian territory, a source said
He said there were a number of questions to be answered about why such a raid would be carried out now. “Was it simply an opportunistic attempt to grab weapons, or was it an attempt to show local Nigerian dissatisfaction with the Bakassi handover, or was it a deliberate attempt by a militant group to escalate the violence in the region?” he querried.
So far, no one has claimed responsibility. A news service correspondent in Cameroon said that military sources told him the attackers wore Nigerian military uniforms and attacked a Cameroonian military boat carrying food intended for soldiers on the peninsula.
They killed the Cameroonian soldiers on board and put on their uniforms. They then went to the peninsula and shot and wounded more unsuspecting soldiers before getting away with some military equipment. There is said to be great surprise in the region at the incident, as since the peaceful handover in August 2006, the area has been quiet.
There were a series of bloody clashes between Nigeria and Cameroon in the 1990s. The peninsula had been administered by Nigeria since independence from Britain in 1960.
However, Cameroon based its claim of sovereignty over the region on maps dating back to the colonial era and was successful at the International Court of Justice after a lengthy case. Bakassi juts into the Gulf of Guinea, an area which may contain up to 10 per cent of the world’s oil and gas reserves. It is also rich in fish and most locals are fishermen.
The Nigerian Army on Tuesday denied any involvement in the attack on some Cameroonian gendames, who were allegedly attacked by some Nigerians.
Director of Army Public Relations, Colonel Solomon Giwa-Amu, reacting to the alleged attack on the Camerounians by Nigerian rebels, maintained that Nigeria had withdrawn her troops from the Bakassi area and had no single military presence in that part of the world, which it ceded to Cameroun last year August, following the judgment of the International Court of Justice at the Hague.
Colonel Giwa-Amu, who also confirmed the rumours of the alleged attack, which according to him, has come to the ears of military authorities in Abuja, however, pointed out that the army was not taking the matter lightly as it set to launch an investigation into the matter to autheticate the true picture of what happened, promising that those involved in the alleged attack, which was reported by a foreign broadcast media would be dealt with.
Meanwhile, the Chief Press Secretary to the Cross River State Governor, Patrick Ugbe, said from what they learnt, the attack was not in the Nigerian territory.
The government believed the attack was carried out by sea pirates and not Niger Delta militants.
The attack took place in Ine Unya, one of the territories ceded to Cameroon in Bakassi.