A local journalist told the BBC that Muslim opposition supporters had gone on the rampage when they heard their candidate to head the council had lost.

This sparked unrest in the religiously divided city, with Christians burning mosques and Muslims burning churches.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed and the army sent to restore order.

In 2001, more than 1,000 people died in religious clashes in the city.

An unnamed Red Cross worker told Reuters news agency that at least 20 people had been killed and 300 wounded in the clashes.

“Very early this morning a group of protesters macheted to death a policeman,” one witness told Reuters.

A police spokesman confirmed to the BBC that one officer had died but could not give an exact number of civilians casualties.

Poll rumours

A lecturer at the University of Jos said smoke could be seen from burning tires and buildings.

“From where I’m standing I can see smoke coming from all over the city,” Victor Dugga told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

He added that people are very worried as there has been no information on the local media about the violence.

“We have three radio stations in Jos and they are only playing music and telling us about what happened yesterday. Nobody is telling us what happened now,” he said.

The protests started overnight with singing and burning of tyres on the roads by groups of youths over reports of election rigging.

The election result has not been officially announced but the protests turned violent after a rumour spread that the opposition candidate to lead the local council had been defeated.

The opposition All Nigeria People’s Party and the ruling People’s Democratic Party allegedly involved in the fray are yet to make any statement on the matter.

Local journalist Senan Murray told the BBC’s Hausa Service that Muslims in the city tend to support the ANPP and Christians the PDP.

In 2004, a state of emergency was declared in Plateau State, of which Jos is the capital, after more than 200 Muslims were killed in the town of Yelwa in attacks by Christian militia.

Correspondents say communal violence in Nigeria is complex, but it often boils down to competition for resources such as land between those that see themselves as the true “indigenes” of an area, and those that are considered to be more recent “settlers”.

In Plateau State, Christians are regarded as the indigenes and Hausa-speaking Muslims the settlers.

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“The details are still scanty and we are gathering more information,“ spokesman Rabe Abubakar said.

A Chevron spokesman said production had been shut down but did not give any figures. One security source said 100,000 barrels per day of the OPEC member’s oil output had been cut because of the attack.

Attacks by militants and criminal gangs have cut Nigeria’s oil production by a fifth since early 2006.

Security sources said the pipeline was located in Abiteye, where community members have attacked oil facilities in the past.

Armed youths blew up the Abiteye-Olero crude pipeline in June, forcing Chevron to cut around 120,000 bpd for nearly a month.

Violence in the Niger Delta stems from a complex set of factors including poverty, lack of basic services, corruption among government officials and security forces, resentment toward foreign oil companies and political thuggery.

OIL BUNKERING

Networks of armed gangs have taken advantage of the breakdown in law and order to steal industrial quantities of crude oil — known locally as “bunkering“ — part of an illegal international trade worth millions of dollars a day.

In a separate incident, the military said its navy had arrested 22 Filipinos after intercepting a vessel suspected of carrying stolen crude oil in the delta, the heart of Nigeria’s oil sector.

Gunboats intercepted the MT Akuada in the waters off of Escravos, the same region where Friday’s pipeline attack occurred.

“Preliminary investigation conducted onboard the ship revealed that the … product it was conveying was illegally bunkered from Bedfut point in Delta state by crude oil thieves,“ the military’s Abubaker said, adding that the vessel held 12,000 tonnes of oil.

Some estimates put the amount of crude stolen from the Niger Delta at 100,000 bpd, equivalent to around $5.6 million daily or $2 billion a year at current prices. It is shipped out of Nigeria and sold on the international market.

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“A commando unit from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) today, Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at about 1700 Hrs conducted a successful rescue of Mr Melad Nasari as promised, from deep inside the bush where he was confined by his abductors,” said a MEND statement.

“During the course of the operation, they heard the frantic shout for help from an individual who introduced himself as Mr. Patrick Akorodu, a manager with Zenith Bank Omoku branch in Rivers state.

“He said he was a victim of the criminal gang that abducted the Lebanese national,” the statement added.

Both men were in the safe custody of MEND and were now en route to a drop off zone where they would be handed to contacts from the state security service.

Nigerian police said on Monday unidentified gunmen had kidnapped a Lebanese engineer in southern Nigeria’s oil hub of Port Harcourt.

MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, claims to be fighting for a greater share of the oil revenue for the local population in southern Nigeria.

It is the country’s most prominent armed militant group and has distanced itself from the abduction and offered to rescue the Lebanese from the kidnappers.

“This assistance is purely a goodwill gesture and does not affiliate us with the (Nigerian) government in any way,” said MEND on Monday.

In the past three years, Nigeria has seen a spate of kidnappings both of local and foreign oil workers and of relatives of prominent politicians, often by criminal gangs seeking a ransom, but sometimes also for political ends.

Since the beginning of 2006, militant attacks have cut Nigeria’s oil output by more than one quarter. Production currently stands at between 1.8 and two million barrels a day against 2.6 million barrels a day two years ago.

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