[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

The attack on the police station in the trading town of Nnewi on Saturday is part of a pattern of recent attacks on police stations Anambra linked to a group campaigning for an independent Biafra republic for the region’s mainly ethnic Igbos.

Police commissioner Haruna John in charge of the state blamed the attack on the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), who he said raided the police station in 13 buses in a retaliatory attack. John said a police patrol had exchanged fire with some MASSOB activists on Friday, killing two of them.

“On Saturday they came to Nnewi, dressed in military uniforms, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying sophisticated arms,” John told reporters. “They attacked our men and set the station and vehicles on fire.”

Apart from the two dead policemen, two of the attackers were also shot dead by the police. Fourteen detainees were freed by the attackers who also escaped with some police weapons, the police said.

According to John, those who attacked the Nnewi station were among members of the separatist group dislodged from the nearby city of Onitsha following clashes with the police in June. The violence had spiraled in the city afterwards as it drew in other armed gangs residents say are being sponsored by politicians jostling ahead of elections early next year.

Troops were subsequently drafted in by the authorities to help the police quell the unrest after the main prison in the city was attacked and all its prisoners released.

MASSOB officials have tried to distance the group from these incidents, including the latest attack on the Nnewi police station, accusing the government of sponsoring the violence to discredit the group.

“We are a non-violent organisation and we’re not responsible for the attack on the police station,” said Uche Nwoha, a spokesman for the group. “The violence is being sponsored by people close to the government as an excuse to kill our members,” he said.

Several residents of Nnewi and Onitsha contacted by IRIN said while some MASSOB members carry arms and have been involved in recent violence, some of the violence has been linked to a transport union whose members have been hired as thugs by some prominent politicians.

The local state-owned radio quoted Anambra governor Peter Obi as also blaming the attack on some unnamed top politicians seeking to destabilise his government.

Tension has been mounting in Africa’s most populous country of more than 126 million people ahead of general elections due in April 2007. Rival ethnic and interest groups are not averse to using violence to achieve political ends, with separatist and sectarian tendencies also on the rise in the country split between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south.

[ENDS]