Nigerian 'Taliban' strike again
2004-01-03 21:35
Kano, Nigeria - A radical Islamist group inspired by Afghanistan's Taliban movement has raided a northern Nigerian town and killed a police officer, Yobe State Governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim said on Saturday.
About 200 members of the Muhajirun sect stormed into Yobe State's capital, Damaturu, early on Thursday, firing into the air, and sacked three police stations, local journalists reported.
The attack follows two incidents late last month when Islamic radicals clashed with security forces in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, leaving one policeman and three alleged extremists dead.
The Muhajirun are thought to be mainly middle-class Nigerian graduates inspired by the Taliban's vision of a Islamic state run in accordance with the principles of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi current of Islam.
"This group, which call themselves Taliban, left (the northeastern city of) Maiduguri three months ago and settled in an open area between Yobe State and the Niger Republic," the governor told Radio Kaduna.
Ibrahim said that his government had sought to persuade the group to move on after complaints from local residents but that instead they had turned on security forces in two violent incidents.
"On Thursday morning they attacked some police stations here in the capital but they were dispersed," he said.
"Most of these people are children of very influential people in our country," the governor added, without giving details.
One police officer was killed on Thursday. Another officer was killed last month at Kanamma, 240km north of Damaturu on Nigeria's remote northern frontier with Niger.
The clashes with the Muhajirun came amid tensions in the unruly highland city of Jos, further south in Plateau State, where a police raid against a different Islamic group last month left three dead.
Although the Muhajirun reportedly claim allegiance to the Afghan Taliban's ousted leader Mullah Omar, they are not thought to have trained or fought in Afghanistan with his men or their Al-Qaeda allies.
The Al-Qaeda Islamist network's fugitive leader, Saudi-born radical Osama bin Laden, last year named Nigeria as one of six "apostate states" whose secular governments ought to be overthrown by Muslim rebels.
But so far no evidence has emerged of any organised Islamic militias or terror cells springing up to heed his call.
Slightly more than half of Nigeria's huge 126 million strong population are Muslims, mainly living in the north of the country. President Olusegun Obasanjo is a southern Christian.