July 1, 2003 11:15 AM
Eight dead in Nigeria fuel price protests
LAGOS (Reuters) - Security forces have shot dead four Nigerians and four others have been killed by a speeding vehicle during street protests over fuel prices in the oil-producing country, police say.
A police spokesman said the four were shot in a suburb of the inland capital Abuja, where police fired teargas and battled protesters on Monday.
"They were killed in an encounter with security forces," police spokesman Chris Olakpe said on Tuesday. He said the firefight suggested they may have been criminals taking advantage of the protests.
The other four died in Lagos when a speeding vehicle crashed into a group of demonstrators.
"Four people died in the demonstration in Lagos, but it was accidental," a Lagos police spokesman said of the deaths in the commercial capital.
On Monday, riot police fired live rounds into the air and used teargas to quell violence as a general strike paralysed the world's eighth biggest oil exporting nation, shutting ports, banks, shops and petrol stations. Unionists torched barricades.
Nigerian trade unionists vowed to push the strike into a second day on Tuesday, triggering mounting concern over the West African state's more than two million barrels a day of oil exports.
Reuters
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