ABUJA - Nigeria's main militant group said yesterday it was not directly responsible for the sabotage of an oil pipeline that forced Royal Dutch Shell to shut down three pumping stations.

ABUJA - Nigeria's main militant group said yesterday it was not directly responsible for the sabotage of an oil pipeline that forced Royal Dutch Shell to shut down three pumping stations.

The sabotage on Saturday came hours after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) ended a three-month-old ceasefire and threatened to unleash "an all-out assault" on Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.

While Mend said the attack was the work of a militant group it backed, one security source said the sabotage on Shell's pipeline, in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, might have been carried out by oil thieves.

"Mend was not directly responsible," the group said in an e-mail to Reuters. - Reuters