Eight policemen and one civilian were killed yesterday when an armed gang dressed in military fatigues attacked the offices of the Italian oil company Agip in Nigeria.
It was not clear if the attack, in the southern city of Port Harcourt, was carried out by the same group that has kidnapped four foreign oil workers and crippled Nigerian oil output by a tenth during a month-long campaign of violence in the world's eighth largest exporter.
"An armed gang in military attire attacked the Agip offices," a security source said.
"The armed gang exchanged fire with the local security forces and made their way to a banking facility which is located on the base," Agip's parent company, ENI, said in a statement from Italy.
The group of 20 to 30 men, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, arrived at the company's compound in two speedboats and engaged police in a gun battle.
A witness who arrived at the scene shortly after the gunfight saw the bodies of eight police and one civilian being loaded into ambulances. Other people were injured.
The company confirmed the nine deaths and said it had "temporarily evacuated staff and contractors from the area of the base affected by the incident and the situation is currently under control".
The raid on Agip took place at a time of heightened alert among Western multinationals in the Niger Delta, which produces most of Nigeria's 2.4 million barrels of oil a day.
Militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who abducted the workers and attacked two oil pipelines and two platforms, have threatened more attacks on the industry. Output is already down by 221,000 barrels a day.