Cameroon: Pirates resist in border peninsula

(SomaliNet) Cameroon’s defence ministry said on Sunday that security forces beat back an attack by pirates in waters off the Bakassi peninsula bordering Nigeria at the weekend, sinking one of their speedboats.

An armed group that says it is fighting for compensation for Nigerian settlers of Bakassi forced to leave the peninsula when it was handed back to Cameroon in August, said its fighters were involved in Saturday\'s clash near Jabane.

Africa\'s top oil producer Nigeria formally handed over control of Bakassi to Cameroon in line with a 2002 International Court of Justice (ICJ) order. The peninsula is reported to have significant untapped oil reserves.

The little-known Niger Delta Defence and Security Council (NDDSC), which has claimed previous attacks this year on Cameroonian soldiers in Bakassi, denied the defence ministry\'s assertion that one of its boats was sunk in the gunfight.

\"None of our boys was hurt, all our boats returned safely to base,\" NDDSC commander Ebi Dari told Reuters. He said the Cameroonian soldiers had opened fire first on the group.

Cameroon\'s defence ministry said no casualties were reported on the Cameroon army side.

About 50 people have been killed in violence in Bakassi in the past year, including attacks on Cameroonian soldiers.

Dari repeated a threat by the NDDSC to make Bakassi \"ungovernable\" and turn it into \"another Darfur\" if Cameroon did not release two of its fighters captured in July and pay compensation to Nigerians forced to leave the territory following the handover to Cameroon on August 14.

Before this, 90 percent of the population in the Bakassi peninsula, estimated at 200,000 to 300,000, were Nigerian fishermen and their families. Bakassi leaders and Nigerian lawmakers say they do not want to become Cameroonians.
Nigeria has offered to resettle them.

Nigeria and Cameroon fought over Bakassi in 1994. The ICJ gave Bakassi to Cameroon in a 2002 ruling, based largely on a 1913 treaty between former colonial powers Britain and Germany.

Saturday\'s clash occurred a week after the Gulf of Guinea neighbours agreed to work together to protect their land and sea border from raids by militants and pirates and to fight illegal trafficking of arms, drugs, oil products and migrants.

Authorities in Nigeria are fighting a war against Niger Delta militants who often use fast launches to attack army posts and oil installations, sometimes striking at ships and rigs far out to sea in the Gulf of Guinea.

Meanwhile, Cameroon is worried about this violence spilling over into its own territory. Gunmen in speedboats in late September attacked the coastal town of Limbe, robbing four banks and killing one person.

Equatorial Guinea and Benin have reported similar seaborne raids over the last year.

Worried about insecurity, the navies of the United States, which imports more than 15 percent of its oil from the Gulf of Guinea, and other Western countries have stepped up visits to the area.-Reuters