Nigerian militants holding three oil hostages on Wednesday threatened to launch again attacks on oil facilities that had cut daily oil output in Africa's largest crude exporter by 556,000 barrels, or 25 percent.

"The following days will be bleak for the Nigerian oil industry. We will commence our long delayed attacks on the Nigerian oil industry," the ethnic Ijaw militants belonging to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) warned in an emailed statement.

"Soldiers guarding such facilities are reminded to lay down their arms and be spared. We will attack the most heavily fortified installations so the Nigerian government cannot claim to have been caught unawares," they said.

On Tuesday, Ijaw youth leaders rose from their two-day meeting in the southern state of Delta, appealing to the militants over the release of the remaining hostages, including two Americans and one Briton.

"We believe that a clear and formal declaration to that effect by the federal government of Nigeria and the release of the remaining hostages in the Niger Delta would demonstrate goodwill," they said in a four-page statement issued at the end of the meeting.

The militants, however, denied the release of three foreign oil workers soon and said they had split them for "strategic reasons."

"We wish to dispel rumors being circulated in the Nigerian media amongst others of an impending release of the three hostages remaining in our custody. These are mischievous fabrications of the Nigerian government," said the statement.

"The hostages have been separated for strategic reasons and all considerations to their comfort and well being, disregarded henceforth. However as previously stated, they will not be executed without good reason."

Two weeks ago, the militants freed six of the nine hostages they seized on February 18 from a vessel laying a pipeline for Royal Dutch Shell in retaliation for military bombardment of their strongholds on the ground of rooting out oil thieves.

They, however, insisted on the demilitarization of the delta as a condition for the cease-fire and the release of the three remaining hostages.

They also vowed not to compromise on its demands for the release of two ethnic Ijaw leaders, payment of 1.5-billion-U.S. dollar compensation to Ijaw communities affected by Shell spillages.

But the government had "till date refused to address our demands choosing instead a military option as a solution to the Niger Delta issue," they said in the statement issued on Wednesday.

The group once again advised foreign oil workers and their families to leave the troubled Niger Delta, which is the heartland of Nigeria's oil industry.

"In the event of an escalated confrontation with the Nigerian military, they and their families will be attacked without discrimination in response to the indiscriminate attack tactics commonly applied by the Nigerian army on communities in the Niger Delta," it warned.

Source: Xinhua