Security agents on Tuesday found 11 bodies of policemen declared missing at the weekend in Nigeria's southern Bayelsa state, police and army spokespersons said.
One officer remains unaccounted for.
State police spokesperson Alex Akhigbe told reporters that the bodies were taken to a morgue in the state capital Yenagoa.
Witnesses said some of the bodies
recovered along the creeks and waterways of the oil-rich state were
burnt beyond recognition, mutilated and stripped of their uniforms and
rifles.
The Friday attack by speedboat
came two days after the main militant group in the Niger Delta region,
MEND, allegedly threatened to resume attacks over the conviction of
presumed leader Henry Okah in South Africa.
Police, however have linked the
ambush to a dispute between an ex-militant and his gang over improperly
distributed payments from a 2009 amnesty deal.
Authorities said the attack occurred while police were escorting the ex-militant to his mother's burial.
One of the police boats broke down on the way and was a “soft target”, according to Bayelsa police commissioner Kingsley Omire.
A South African court jailed Okah
for 24 years on March 26 following his conviction over twin car bomb
attacks on Independence Day in Abuja in 2010. Okah has permanent
residency in South Africa.
Okah was an alleged leader of
MEND, an umbrella group which claimed to be fighting for fairer
distribution of oil revenue in Nigeria, Africa's largest crude producer.
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