Colonel Rabe Abubakar, spokesman of the Joint Military Taskforce (JTF) -- a special unit of the army, navy and police -- said that "two militants were killed and three arrested" when they "recently encountered a JTF patrol team at Degema" in southern Rivers State.

Abubakar said the attackers from the same group, which he did not name, staged another attack on JTF on Tuesday, "in efforts to avenge their colleagues' misfortunes and probably rescue the arrested ones."

The attack, carried out from three speed boats in the delta's creeks, "was successfully thwarted" by the government troops, he said.

The main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) last week threatened to "join the fray" between the JTF and youths in southern Bayelsa State who, according to MEND, have been staging protests against Royal Dutch Shell.

"We wish to warn that should any MEND camps be attacked, the entire Niger Delta region will become a theatre of another civil war," the group said in a statement.

"The same position will be taken if the military carries out any punitive invasion on the impoverished communities that protested against Shell which led to this current crisis," the group added.

Militants waging the attacks say they are fighting for a fair distribution of oil wealth to local people of the delta in the world's eighth largest oil producer.

The unrest in the Niger Delta has drastically reduced Nigeria's oil output, with daily production currently hovering at around 1.78 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency, compared with 2.6 million barrels in 2006.

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