Nigerian Islamists routed as army storms mosque
(Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)
Nigerian police are continuing the hunt for surviving militia members
The Nigerian army claimed today that it has decisively overpowered a violent sect of radical Islamists who have murdered hundreds in the name of al-Qaeda.
Soldiers shelled the group’s compound and killed around 100 militants in a fierce gun-battle at their mosque last night.
Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of the militant Boko Haram sect, managed to escape the fighting in Maiduguri along with about 300 of his followers, but his deputy was killed, soldiers said.
The army was scouring the outskirts of the city today looking for Yusuf and the missing fighters, who style themselves as the Nigerian Taleban.
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Ali Modu Sheriff, the Borno state governor, announced on state radio today: “Security personnel have succeeded in dislodging the militants and I urge everyone to go about their normal duties.
“Meanwhile the house-to-house search is still going on and anybody that harbours them will be dealt with according to the law.”
Soldiers shot their way into the Boko Haram mosque yesterday and then apparently raked those holed up inside with gunfire. About 50 bodies were seen inside the building and another 50 in the courtyard outside. The militants were armed with homemade hunting rifles, bows and arrows and scimitars.
Major General Saleh Maina, the commander of the operation, announced: “The mission has been accomplished.”
The heavily armed sect, which emerged in Nigeria in 2004, has killed more than 150 people in a week of violent unrest. Although, it has never been clear if it has proper links to the Taleban in Afghanistan its leaders profess allegiance to and admiration of Osama bin Laden.
The militants were seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law throughout the multi-religious country. They attacked police stations, churches, prisons and government buildings in a wave of violence that began on Sunday in Borno and quickly spread to three other states in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria.
It is not known how many scores of people have been killed, wounded and arrested in the violence. More than a hundred bodies were reported dumped at Maiduguri police station yesterday.
The epicentre of the violence has been the Boko Haram’s headquarters in Maiduguri. Maj. Gen. Maina said his troops would fire mortar shells later today to destroy what is left of the sprawling compound, which stretches over 2.5 miles.
President Umaru Yar’Adua said intelligence agencies had been tracking the group for years and that its members were procuring arms and learning to make bombs to force their views on Nigerians. He ordered the security forces to take all necessary action to “contain them once and for all”.
The violence in the north is not connected to unrest in the Niger Delta in the south, where militant attacks have prevented Nigeria from pumping more than about two-thirds of its oil capacity.
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