BATAN FLOWSTATION, Nigeria Plying shadowy waterways of the Niger delta in Dugout Canoes, youths kidnap European oil workers and launch raids on tribal enemies with machetes and torches. Platoons of soldiers rush in with choppers and speedboats and reply with force. The violence has cost hundreds of lives since December, witnesses and local journalists say. Although downplayed by Nigeria's military government and the multinational firms that pump billions of dollars of oil from beneath the muddy swamps, the increasingly militant struggle in the delta over land, oil and the environment threatens to disrupt this West African country's Feb. 27 presidential elections.

Ethnic Ijaw activists vow to paralyze the oil industry by capturing wells and export terminals. Murkier groups accused of holding dozens of foreign oil workers last year for ransom threaten to disrupt polling through violence, if necessary. ``We, the owners of the Niger Delta have become its slaves,'' said Kennedy Orubebe of the federated Izon communities of the Niger Delta, a militant Ijaw group.

``We are oppressed, so we don't mind fighting to the last woman or man alive. We don't care.'' The delta pumps the economic lifeblood of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with more than 100 million people. But despite its natural wealth, the delta remains mired in poverty, a marshy warren of huts and unemployment. (AP)