Home
Politics
"Since morning, you can hear nothing but gunfire all over the city," he told AFP by telephone as shots rang out in the background.
Nigeria's police chief Ogbonna Onovo told reporters that the weekend clashes in the states of Bauchi and Yobe claimed the lives of 50 militants and five police, adding that new fighting was raging in nearby Borno.
Police gave no details of casualties there, but one resident, Shafiu Mohammed, said armed men burned a customs officer to death and slit the throat of an engineer working at the customs complex.
"Many government buildings have been burnt including the central prison and several churches. Streets are deserted. People are in their homes," said Ahamad in Maiduguri, a city in the northeastern state of Borno.
The president put the security forces on full alert.
"President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has ordered national security agencies to take all necessary action to contain and repel the sad and shocking attacks by extremists," a presidential statement said.
He also "directed that security be beefed up in all neighbouring states and security personnel placed on full alert to ensure that the attacks by misguided elements do not spread elsewhere".
In Borno, heavily armed Taliban-inspired Islamist rebels reportedly torched two police stations, several churches, a prison, a school, government unemployment bureau and a customs office.
Several telecommunications masts were burnt, cutting off many parts of the city.
"Its quite scary," another resident, Muhammad Auwal Mujahid, told AFP by telephone. "All you hear is frightening sounds from guns."
In Wudil, a town on the outskirts of Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria, militants attacked a police station but were repelled in clashes that left three rebels dead, Kano police spokesman Baba Mohammed told AFP.
In Yobe, the militants doused a police station with petrol and set it alight.
Yobe authorities have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Potiskum, a major city, while 25 suspects have been arrested, government spokesman Abdullahi Bego told AFP.
The fighting broke out Sunday in Bauchi state when police hit back at militants after they attacked a police station. An AFP reporter said calm had returned to Bauchi by Monday, where a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on Sunday.
The Nigerian extremists emerged in 2004 in Maiduguri before setting up a base -- dubbed "Afghanistan" -- in Kanamma village in Yobe, on the border with Niger, from where it attacked police outposts and killed police officers.
The north of Nigeria is mainly Muslim, although large Christian minorities have settled in the main towns, raising tensions between the two groups.
Since 1999 and the return of a civilian regime to Nigeria's central government, 12 northern states have introduced Islamic Sharia law. The latest attacks, which independent security analysts say were co-ordinated, affected a third of these states.
More than 700 people died last November in Jos, the capital of Plateau state, when a political feud over a local election degenerated into a bloody confrontation between Muslims and Christians.
Similar sectarian clashes in Bauchi state killed 14 people in February.
One of the Nigerian "Taliban" leaders, Aminu Tashen-Ilimi, told AFP in a 2005 interview that the group intended to lead an armed insurrection and rid society of "immorality" and "infidelity".
Nigeria's police chief Ogbonna Onovo told reporters that the weekend clashes in the states of Bauchi and Yobe claimed the lives of 50 militants and five police, adding that new fighting was raging in nearby Borno.
Police gave no details of casualties there, but one resident, Shafiu Mohammed, said armed men burned a customs officer to death and slit the throat of an engineer working at the customs complex.
"Many government buildings have been burnt including the central prison and several churches. Streets are deserted. People are in their homes," said Ahamad in Maiduguri, a city in the northeastern state of Borno.
The president put the security forces on full alert.
"President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has ordered national security agencies to take all necessary action to contain and repel the sad and shocking attacks by extremists," a presidential statement said.
He also "directed that security be beefed up in all neighbouring states and security personnel placed on full alert to ensure that the attacks by misguided elements do not spread elsewhere".
In Borno, heavily armed Taliban-inspired Islamist rebels reportedly torched two police stations, several churches, a prison, a school, government unemployment bureau and a customs office.
Several telecommunications masts were burnt, cutting off many parts of the city.
"Its quite scary," another resident, Muhammad Auwal Mujahid, told AFP by telephone. "All you hear is frightening sounds from guns."
In Wudil, a town on the outskirts of Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria, militants attacked a police station but were repelled in clashes that left three rebels dead, Kano police spokesman Baba Mohammed told AFP.
In Yobe, the militants doused a police station with petrol and set it alight.
Yobe authorities have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Potiskum, a major city, while 25 suspects have been arrested, government spokesman Abdullahi Bego told AFP.
The fighting broke out Sunday in Bauchi state when police hit back at militants after they attacked a police station. An AFP reporter said calm had returned to Bauchi by Monday, where a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on Sunday.
The Nigerian extremists emerged in 2004 in Maiduguri before setting up a base -- dubbed "Afghanistan" -- in Kanamma village in Yobe, on the border with Niger, from where it attacked police outposts and killed police officers.
The north of Nigeria is mainly Muslim, although large Christian minorities have settled in the main towns, raising tensions between the two groups.
Since 1999 and the return of a civilian regime to Nigeria's central government, 12 northern states have introduced Islamic Sharia law. The latest attacks, which independent security analysts say were co-ordinated, affected a third of these states.
More than 700 people died last November in Jos, the capital of Plateau state, when a political feud over a local election degenerated into a bloody confrontation between Muslims and Christians.
Similar sectarian clashes in Bauchi state killed 14 people in February.
One of the Nigerian "Taliban" leaders, Aminu Tashen-Ilimi, told AFP in a 2005 interview that the group intended to lead an armed insurrection and rid society of "immorality" and "infidelity".
