The security forces rescued 19 hostages — two Americans, two Frenchmen, two Indonesians, one Canadian and 12 Nigerians — from a camp in the mangrove creeks late on Wednesday in what the government heralded as a major victory.

The joint military task force responsible for policing the region said it had taken over several militant camps and that an operation to secure others was “ongoing.”

“This operation will continue as long as it will take to uproot the militants from the Niger Delta,” Major General Charles Omoregie, the commander of the task force, said.

But the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) militant group said on Friday it would carry out more kidnappings from oil facilities and said they had killed several soldiers in an ambush of military gunboats.

“Our fighters have been instructed to carry out more raids on oil installations from where fresh hostages will be taken,” the group said in a statement e-mailed to media.

It said the 19 hostages had been guarded by only a few of its fighters, who had retreated “in order to prevent an exchange of fire that would have endangered (their) lives.”

The group said its fighters attacked navy gunboats as they prepared to raid a camp in Delta state on Thursday and that 10 soldiers were killed. A military spokesman confirmed an operation on Thursday but had no information on any deaths.

The MEND statement said 18 seriously injured soldiers had been taken to Warri hospital in Delta state. A Reuters correspondent at the hospital saw no wounded soldiers.

Sources in Delta, one of the three main oil-producing states in the region, said the army had raided a camp belonging to a gang leader called John Togo in the creeks on the border between Delta and neighboring Bayelsa state.

Resurgent unrest in the Niger Delta risks undermining the credibility of President Goodluck Jonathan in the run-up to elections next April. Jonathan is the first head of state from the oil region and brokered an amnesty with militants last year.

MEND’s main field commanders accepted the amnesty, and at least two of them, Farah Dagogo and Boyloaf, were instrumental in the negotiations which led to the 19 hostages being released.

But the militants were always factionalized and new leaders have started to emerge. The hostages were held by a new field commander called Obese, a former Dagogo gang member, and the military wants to ensure such figures cannot gain a foothold.

“There is a need to take over all these camps. If not ... they could be reactivated,” Omoregie said.
 

Nigeria’s more muscular military approach may put newly emerging militants on the back foot, but it will be impossible to fully guard oil facilities against sabotage and piracy.

Shell  on Friday declared force majeure on its Bonny Light oil exports after a pipeline was damaged, freeing it from shipment obligations, though there was no immediate evidence of links to militant activity.

Previous campaigns by MEND fighters have knocked out a significant chunk of Nigeria’s oil production, currently averaging around 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), and cost it as much as $1 billion a month in lost revenues.

Security experts see a repeat of such a devastating level of attacks as unlikely at this stage, with the amnesty and the arrest of several key militant leaders having damaged MEND.

Henry Okah, believed to be one of the group’s masterminds, was denied bail on Friday by a court in South Africa, where he has been detained in connection with car bombings in Nigeria’s capital Abuja on Oct. 1 claimed by MEND.

But oil infrastructure in the delta, a network of thousands of shallow creeks opening into the Gulf of Guinea, is extremely exposed with thousands of kilometers (miles) of pipeline passing through remote and thickly-forested terrain.

Disputes between local communities and international oil firms can be just as damaging as organized militant attacks. Attacking a pipeline and shutting down production requires little more than simple home-made explosives.

It is also extremely difficult to fully protect offshore platforms such as those operated by Exxon Mobil and Afren, from where 15 of the 19 hostages were kidnapped.

The militants use open craft too small to be detected by radar for such raids and are able to operate even deep offshore by using a “mother ship,” a larger vessel which supplies the speedboats with fuel and food, security experts say.