Witnesses said today more than 100 people were missing and some feared drowned after jumping into a river during violent clashes in Nigeria between supporters of rival political parties ahead of elections next month.
They also said one woman was killed in yesterday's rally involving supporters of President Olusegun Obasanjo's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition ANPP party near the oil city of Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta.
The clash was the latest in a relentless wave of violence in Africa's most populous nation of more than 120 million people ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in April, the first polls since military rule ended in 1999.
"People, men and women were badly cut with machetes and other dangerous weapons, while more than 100 people who jumped into the river are still missing. Some of them may have drowned," one witness said.
The witnesses said hundreds of ANPP supporters staging a campaign rally in the town of Bakana, in southeast Rivers state, jumped into the river in a stampede after armed PDP supporters stormed the rally.
An elderly woman was burnt to death in the house of a local ANPP chairman that was allegedly torched by PDP supporters, the witnesses said. There was no immediate comment from either party.
The Niger Delta has been rocked for weeks by ethnic fighting which has forced oil firms to shut in 40 per cent of Nigeria's crude production, the African nation's economic mainstay.
However, this latest violence was not thought to be linked to that unrest.