A Reuters reporter heard a powerful blast which shook windows and a sustained gun battle, which was still under way after more than an hour.

Boko Haram is waging a low level insurgency against the government and says it wants to impose sharia law across the country of 160 million people split evenly between Muslims and Christians.

Militants also blew up a pharmacy in a market area in the remote northeastern city of Maiduguri, Boko Haram’s heartland, witnesses said. A Reuters photographer saw black smoke billowing from the building.

“The gunmen came from different directions to attack the Sharada industrial estate police station with bombs and gun shot some minutes after 6pm. One policeman was shot on the leg and he is receiving treatment in hospital,” Kano police spokesman Magaji Musa Majia’a said by telephone.

“Our men at the station engaged them in a gun battle and as I speak to you now our men has taken over the place and are mopping up the area.”

Boko Haram have become President Goodluck Jonathan’s biggest security headache and a major distraction from plans to reform Africa’s second biggest economy, as he has come under increasing fire for failing to quell the insurgency in the north.

The past three months have seen a surge in violence by the sect, a movement loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban whose name means “Western education is sinful”.

Kano was the scene of the deadliest attack by the Islamist sect Boko Haram, in which 186 people were killed last month.

Nigerian secret service sources said they arrested the purported spokesman for Islamist militant sect Boko Haram Abu Qaqa on Wednesday, although a man claiming to be him telephoned journalists from the sect’s heartland of Maiduguri to deny it.

In an interview with Reuters on January 26, Jonathan challenged Boko Haram militants to come out of the shadows and identify themselves as a basis for talks, an offer they have yet to take up.

Reuters.

A swat team stormed the dwelling of the man known as ‘Abu Qaqa’ in the northern city of Kaduna in the early hours of the morning and found him hiding under his bed, said the highly-placed source, who asked not to be named.

The past three months have seen a surge in violence by Boko Haram, a movement loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban which says it is fighting to install sharia law across Nigeria.

The arrest of a senior Boko Haram figure would be a coup for the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan which has been criticised for failing to curb the sect’s violent activities in the mainly Muslim north.

The reported arrest came two weeks after the prime suspect in a Christmas Day bombing on a church on the edge of Abuja escaped from police custody, prompting Jonathan to sack his police chief.

“We are still talking to him. Since ‘Abu Qaqa’ is a pseudonym for the Boko Haram spokesman, we want to be sure of who we have with us. But we have been on his trail for months now. He’s been changing locations and contacts,” the State Security Services (SSS) source said.

“He is fairly educated. He is from the Igbira ethnic group, from Kogi state in north central Nigeria,” the SSS official added.

A spokeswoman for the SSS said she had no information on the incident. The police spokesman also declined to confirm it.

A man calling himself Abu Qaqa often appeared in local media after bomb and gun attacks to claim them for the group and justify the choice of target.

For a long time Abu Qaqa was the closest thing the sect had to a public face, before its purported leader Abubakar Shekau posted a video of himself last month on YouTube.

VICTIMS BURIED

Abu Qaqa said Boko Haram carried out the Christmas Day bomb attack that killed 37 people.

He also claimed responsibility for a coordinated series of gun and bomb attacks two weeks ago in the second city of Kano that killed 186 in the group’s deadliest strike to date.

Nigeria conducted a mass burial on Wednesday of 17 of the victims from the bomb attack on St Theresa church in Madalla, a satelite town of Abuja. The other 20 had already been buried.

Bishops in golden robes conducted a sombre service for the Christmas bomb victims, while pall bearers in red polo shirts carried the 17 caskets.

There was a heavy security presence at the service and officials set up metal detectors at the doors to guard against a possible repeat attack by the sect on mourners, as happened on January 6 in the northeastern town of Mubi, in Adamawa state.

“We shall overcome. We shall see the end of these evil people,” President Jonathan said in a statement read out by Reverend Bala Msheila.

The targeting of Christians raised fears Boko Haram was trying to ignite a sectarian war. Abu Qaqa said the attacks were in revenge for an attack on Muslims in Nigeria’s volatile, religiously mixed middle belt during a Muslim holiday in November.

“We pray that those in charge of our security and safety will have the wisdom to know how best to tackle the problem on our hands and the courage to do what needs to be done,” Abuja’s Catholic Archbishop John Onayeikan said.

Attacks by Boko Haram continue, but in recent weeks it has renewed its focus on security targets. The Kano attack mostly hit police stations.

Reuters.

“Two Airforce personnel and two civilians were shot dead in Gomari ward, another was shot dead at the market today while the sixth person was shot dead in front of a mosque in Gamboru-Ngala, a border town with Cameroon, yesterday night,” Colonel Victor Ebhamele, Borno field operations officer, told Reuters.

Boko Haram are waging an increasingly deadly low intensity campaign against the government, and have been blamed for dozens of bombings and shootings in the northern semi-desert regions of Africa’s biggest oil producer.

The group, whose name translates as “Western education is sinful”, is loosely modeled on the Taliban and based largely in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, capital of Borno state.

Its shadowy members say they are fighting to impose sharia or Islamic law across Nigeria, a country of 160 million split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims.

A series of gun and bomb attacks, mostly on police stations, killed 186 people in Nigeria’s second biggest city of Kano on January 20, prompting President Goodluck Jonathan to visit the wounded and promise to stamp out terrorism.

Ebhamele said on Saturday that troops had killed 11 suspected Boko Haram insurgents earlier that day during a gun battle at a checkpoint in Maiduguri.

Reuters.

Kano state and its capital city of 10 million people have been under siege by gunmen from Boko Haram, which wants to impose sharia law across Nigeria.

“We were able to push them out of the area but they burnt part of the police station,” Kano police commissioner Ibrahim Idris said. “It was a blast that caused damage to the station.”

Boko Haram’s attacks have become more sophisticated and deadly in Africa’s top oil producer. A series of gun and bomb attacks, mostly on police stations, killed 186 people in Kano on January 20.

Witnesses said gunmen and armed police were in a shoot out for around an hour after the explosion at the police station at Naibawa district outside Kano.

“We are scared. The police and Boko Haram members are battling each other and there is gunfire everywhere,” Usman Ibrahim Bello, a local resident told Reuters.

In an audio tape posted on the Internet on Thursday, the purported leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to kill more security personnel and kidnap their families, and accused U.S. President Barack Obama of waging war on Islam.

Boko Haram, a movement loosely modeled on the Afghan Taliban whose name translates as “Western education is sinful”, has been behind almost daily killings in its home base in the largely Muslim northeast. Its violence has spread west into other parts of the north and the capital Abuja since last year.

Reuters.

Nigerian forces are reeling from a sharp uptick of increasingly sophisticated and coordinated attacks by Boko Haram. Human Rights Watch says it has killed hundreds of people since launching an uprising against the government in 2009, including an attack on the city of Kano that killed 186.

“Eleven BH (Boko Haram) members have been shot dead by the JTF (joint military taskforce) in Maiduguri today, following a shootout with the sect members at a checkpoint in a stop and search operation,” field operations officer Colonel Victor Ebhamelehe said told Reuters.

“One member of the sect who was wounded is receiving treatment at the hospital.”

Boko Haram began as a clerical movement opposed to western cultural influences in Maiduguri, a dusty town in the northeast region bordering Chad, Niger and Cameroon, on the cusp of the Sahara. It has since spread to much of Nigeria’s north and has become the top security threat in Africa’s biggest oil producer.

Suspected sect members attacked a police station in Mandwari, in north Nigeria’s Kano state, on Friday, police and witnesses said, leading to more than an hour of running gun battles that fatally wounded one policeman.

“We lost one of our men in the attack in Mandwari inside the city. He is a corporal and he died on the way to hospital. The gunmen were repelled,” Kano police commissioner Ibrahim Idris told Reuters on Saturday.

In an audio tape posted on the Internet on Thursday, the purported leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to kill more security personnel and kidnap their families, and accused U.S. President Barack Obama of waging war on Islam, in an apparent effort to strike a chord with global jihadists.

He denied that the group, which is loosely modelled on the Taliban, had been responsible for most of the civilian casualties in last Friday’s attack on Kano. Police say most of those casualities were shot dead by sect members.

Reuters.

“We will consider negotiation only when we have brought the government to their knees,” Boko Haram spokesman Abu Qaqa told the Guardian.

“Once we see that things are being done according to the dictates of Allah, and our members are released (from prison), we will only put aside our arms – but we will not lay them down. You don’t put down your arms in Islam, you only put them aside.”

Boko Haram’s attacks have become more sophisticated and deadly in recent weeks. A series of gun and bomb attacks killed 186 people in Nigeria’s second city of Kano last Friday.

Gunmen suspected of being members of the group attacked a police sstation in Kano state on Friday, police and witnesses said, leading to more than an hour of running gunbattles.

Qaqa said the group’s members were spiritual followers of al Qaeda, and said they had met senior figures in the network during visits to Saudia Arabia.

The Guardian said that for most of the interview Abu Qaqa

used a modulator to disguise his voice, but local journalists confirmed that his undisguised voice matched recordings of previous interviews.

In an audio tape posted on the Internet on Thursday, the purported leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to kill more security personnel and kidnap their families, and accused U.S. President Barack Obama of waging war on Islam.

Qaqa said recruits from neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger had joined the group.

He said the rights of the country’s 70 million Christians, half of Nigeria’s population, “would be protected” under the group’s envisioned Islamic state.

“Even the prophet Mohammed lived with non-Muslims and he gave them their dues,” he said.

But he added that everyone must abide by sharia law: “There are no exceptions. Even if you are a Muslim and you don’t abide by sharia, we will kill you. Even if you are my own father, we will kill you.

“People should understand that we are not saying we have to rule Nigeria, but we have been motivated by the stark injustice in the land. People underrate us but we have our sights set on (bringing sharia to) the whole world, not just Nigeria.”

Reuters.

In an interview with Reuters at the presidential villa in the capital Abuja, Jonathan said there was no doubt that Boko Haram had links with other jihadist groups outside Nigeria.

The sect killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks in Africa’s top oil producer, Human Rights Watch said this week.

Coordinated attacks in the northern city of Kano killed 186 people on Friday in its most deadly strike to date, prompting the president to visit surviving victims.

“If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties … then there will be a basis for dialogue,” said Jonathan.

“We will dialogue, let us know your problems and we will solve your problem but if they don’t identify themselves, who will you dialogue with?”

Jonathan, who won an election last year that observers said was Nigeria’s cleanest since the end of military rule in 1999, has been criticised for dealing with the insurgency in the north using purely military means.

But in this interview he pledged to bring development to remote, semi-arid corners of the country where high youth unemployment has provided easy recruits for extremists.

“Military confrontation alone will not eliminate terror attacks,” he said, adding that an “enabling environment for young people to find jobs” was also needed.

“Our commitment is to make sure our irrigation programmes are all revitalised so most of these young people are engaged in productive agriculture and … will not be free for them to recruit,” Jonathan said in an ornate diplomatic meeting room adorned with pictures of Nigeria’s heads of state since independence in 1960.

“WITHOUT A FACE”

As well as coming under fire for his handling of the crisis in the north, Jonathan suffered a week of vitriolic anti-government protests this month when he tried to scrap fuel subsidies, part of efforts to cut the fiscal costs, but was forced to partly reinstate it.

That prompted the oil ministry to announce a raft of measures aimed at defusing public anger about the extent of corruption and mismanagement in the sector, including setting up a new committee to hurry along the stalled Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

Jonathan said he was confident that a final version of the PIB, which aims to completely overhaul the country’s shambolic oil industry, would be put before the national assembly by the end of February.

Wearing a dark grey kaftan and his trademark fedora hat, the former zoology lecturer and governor of Bayelsa state in the oil rich Niger Delta said the Boko Haram crisis would be much harder to resolve than the southeastern Delta conflict, which was largely defused in 2009 under an amnesty he helped broker.

That was because the Islamist militants do not have a clear public figurehead or negotiable aims, he said.

“If anybody invited Osama bin Laden (to talks), he wouldn’t have appeared … Boko Haram, if you invite them, they will not come. They operate without a face, they operate without a clear identity, so it is difficult to interface with such a group.”

“That is the greatest difference between Boko Haram … and the Niger Delta issue,” he said, flanked by a larger-than-life portrait and Nigeria flags.

Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is sinful”, was formed in 2003 in the remote, northeastern city of Maiduguri. It launched an uprising against the government in 2009 that security forces crushed in days of fighting with the sect that killed around 800 people.

Its leader Mohammed Yusuf was captured and died in police custody during those battles, triggering vows of revenge from other members of the sect which they now seem to be honouring in attacks on security forces and authority figures.

The group’s members have said they want to impose Sharia law across Nigeria, although Jonathan doubted they had clear aims. “There is no clear thing to say: this is what we want,” he said.

LINKS TO AL QAEDA

Security experts say there is growing evidence the group, or some members within it, have received training and support from other jihadist groups such as al Qaeda’s north African wing.

Jonathan refused to be drawn on specific details on this.

“There is a lot of evidence there is linkages … no doubt about that. Meetings are being held in north Africa, the movement of people in these places have been monitored and noticed. The level of involvement and probably in terms of funding and equipment, I do not know,” he said.

The increasingly violence in the north, including a spate of high profile attacks on Christians, has led commentators like Nigerian author Wole Soyenka to predict a fresh civil war, 40 years after the secessionist Biafra conflict killed more than 1 million people and caused mass starvation.

“There is no way Nigeria will go into civil war. These are different situations,” Jonathan said, adding that violence in modern day Nigeria was conducted by “pressure groups” using it to intimidate and threaten rather than full blown armies.

Jonathan sacked his chief of police and six other officers on Friday because of a string of defeats against Boko Haram.

Security forces have come under fire for failing to protect civilians in the north and elsewhere.

Some question whether civilian Jonathan, who as vice president first took power in May 2010 when his predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua died, can lead Nigeria out of this crisis.

“They are trying,” Jonathan said, seeming relaxed throughout the interview. “Terrorism is new in Nigeria, and since its new, the security services have to change their methods. You cannot change methods overnight. But we will do more.”

Many Nigerians believe Boko Haram has become a cover for northern politicians disgruntled at the election of a Christian southerner to try to destabilise his government.

They note that Boko Haram stepped up its bombing campaign hours after he was sworn in on May 30.

He was northerner Yar’Adua’s running mate in a shambolic election in 2007, but his campaign to run himself after Yar’Adua’s death was controversial because of an informal pact within the ruling PDP party that the presidency should rotate between the north and the south.

Jonathan said there may be some northern politicians using Boko Haram militants for intimidation. He reiterated that there were sympathisers with the group at all levels of government.

“I will not rule out that maybe some politicians get close to some members of Boko Haram, but I will not say that Boko Haram is a political group trying to undo Goodluck Jonathan,” he said. “I cannot say it’s because a southerner and a Christian is president that the Boko Haram saga comes up.”

A week of protests against a hike in government subsidised fuel prices this month revealed massive public anger at endemic corruption, which has siphoned billions of dollars of the country’s oil riches.

Jonathan said reports of corruption in the oil ministry and elsewhere were being investigated but that he could not sack anyone in the ministry until he sees proof of misconduct.

“Nigerians are angry about certain things government has not been able to conclude very quickly … You cannot sentence a person without trial,” he said.

He said efforts were being made to hurry the PIB.

“I believe that before the end of February, I’m very hopeful, we’ll submit it to the national assembly … But of course … The president has no powers over the national assembly.”

Reuters.

“The explosives also affected some surrounding buildings. It was a big bang. For now, I can not say how many of our men are affected or whether the bomber died,” the police source said.

Islamist sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a coordinated series of gun and bomb attacks in Kano on Friday that killed 186 people in their deadliest strike yet.

The new focus on Kano, an ancient city once at the heart of caravan routes connecting Africa’s interior with the Mediterranean, underscores the sect’s growing ambition. Gunfire was also heard there early on Tuesday, witnesses said.

From drive by shootings and petrol bombings in its northeastern heartland in Maiduguri, Boko Haram has spread across the north and have struck the capital Abuja.

The Islamists have killed at least 935 people since it launched an uprising in 2009, including more than 250 in the first weeks of this year, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sinful” in the Hausa language spoken in northern Nigeria, is loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban. It has claimed responsibility for bombing churches, police stations, military facilities, banks and beer parlours in the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria.

The sect focuses its attacks mostly on the police, military and government, but has increased its attacks on Christian institutions. It says it is fighting enemies who have wronged its members through violence, arrests or economic neglect and corruption.

The United States-Nigeria binational security commission met on Tuesday. Discussions included the latest Boko Haram attacks and finding ways to stem the violence, diplomatic sources said. The commission usually meets at least once a year.

“Boko Haram’s attacks show a complete and utter disregard for human life,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The Nigerian authorities need to call a halt to this campaign of terror and bring to justice those responsible for planning and carrying out these reprehensible crimes.”

The report said 550 people were killed in 115 separate attacks by Boko Haram last year, mostly in the far northeastern state of Borno, where the sect was founded in 2002.

Boko Haram has moved from drive-by shootings and petrol bombs to suicide attacks using large and increasingly sophisticated explosives. A suicide car bomb last year killed 25 people at the United Nations headquarters in the capital Abuja.

In July 2009 the sect launched an uprising in the northeast in which more than 800 people were killed in five days of fighting with security forces.

The sect originally said it wanted sharia (Islamic law) to be applied more widely across Nigeria.

President Goodluck Jonathan has been severely criticised for not getting a grip on a group he says has infiltrated the police, military and all areas of government.

“Jonathan’s inability to respond effectively, or articulate a credible strategy, reinforces the growing perception of a deep leadership void in Abuja,” London-based risk adviser Eurasia Group said in a research note on Tuesday.

“So far militarisation of the region and strict curfews have only had limited effect and huge (military) spending outlays in 2012 offer little hope for a credible broader strategy.”

Reuters.

A coordinated series of bomb blasts and shooting sprees mostly targeting police stations on Friday sent panicked residents of Nigeria’s second biggest city of more than 10 million people running for cover.

The scale of the carnage makes this by far the deadliest strike claimed by Boko Haram, a shadowy Islamist sect that started out as a clerical movement opposed to western education but has become the biggest security menace facing Africa’s top oil producer.

“We have 178 people killed in the two main hospitals,” the senior doctor in Kano’s Murtala Mohammed hospital said following Friday’s attacks, citing records from his own and the other main hospital of Nasarawa.

“There could be more, because some bodies have not yet come in and others were collected early.”

The streets were quiet on Sunday in Kano, a vast metropolis of wide paved highways, normally buzzing with motorbikes, and sandy alleyways where hawkers sell grilled meat and donkeys pull carts heaped with fruit and vegetables.

Churches, which would usually be filled with worshippers in the religiously mixed city, were largely empty.

Jonathan, a Christian from the south, travelled to Kano on Sunday, visiting hospitals to speak to victims.

“Our coming today is to express our condolence to the good people of Kano over the dastardly acts,” Jonathan said at the palace of the Emir, the city’s Muslim figurehead.

“Those causing havoc will never succeed … The federal government will not rest until the perpetrators are brought to book. We will not rest until these terrorist are wiped out,” said Jonathan, wearing a traditional northern Nigerian kaftan and hat.

Boko Haram has been blamed for killing hundreds of people in increasingly sophisticated bombings and shootings, mostly targeting security forces, establishment figures and more recently Christians, in the country of 160 million people split roughly evenly between them and Muslims.

MORE ATTACKS ON SUNDAY

Apart from a handful of forays into the capital Abuja, the sect’s energies have been concentrated in the majority Muslim north, far from the oil producing facilities along the southern coast that keep Africa’s second biggest economy afloat.

A further 10 people were killed on Sunday in Bauchi state, which neighbours Kano, when police fought gunmen attempting to rob a bank, the police said. Boko Haram robbed several banks last year to fund its insurgency.

“In the early hours of today gunmen killed 10 people at a military checkpoint and a nearby hotel at Tafawa Balewa local government area,” police commissioner Ikechukwu Aduba told Reuters.

“One police officer, an army corporal and eight civilians (were killed) after gunmen were earlier repelled from robbing a bank.”

Explosions also struck two churches in Bauchi on Sunday, witnesses said, destroying one of them completely, although there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The government has announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Kano, an ancient city that was once part of an Islamic caliphate trading riches on caravan routes connecting sub-Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean.

Jonathan, who helped broker a deal that largely ended an insurgency by militants in the oil-rich southeast in 2009, has been criticised for failing to grasp the gravity of the crisis unfolding in the north, and of treating it as a pure security issue that will fizzle out by itself.

Worsening insecurity has led some to question whether Nigeria isn’t sliding into civil war, 40 years after the secessionist Biafra conflict killed over a million people, though few think an all-out war splitting the country into two or more pieces is a likely outcome.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and called for “swift and transparent investigations” into the killings. European powers and the African Union have also condemned the attacks.

SECT CHANGING

Boko Haram became active around 2003 in the remote, northeastern state of Borno, on the threshold of the Sahara, but its attacks have spread into other northern states, including Yobe, Kano, Bauchi and Gombe.

Boko Haram, a Hausa term meaning “Western education is sinful”, is loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban, but analysts say the anger it channels reflects a perception that the north has been marginalised from oil riches concentrated in the south.

The sect originally said it wanted sharia, Islamic law, to be applied more widely across Nigeria but its aims appear to have changed. Recent messages from its leaders have said it is attacking anyone who opposes it, at present mainly police, the government and Christian groups.

“Since 2009 it is an insurgency that has gathered pace almost in slow motion, incrementally – apparently absorbed and accommodated with no clear evidence that government has the capacity, competence or will to turn the tide,” said Antony Goldman, head of Nigeria-focused PM Consulting.

“Boko Haram was a work in progress when (former President) Obasanjo, who had a deserved ‘no nonsense’ reputation, was in power; and it was Yar’Adua, a Muslim President, who ordered a bloody crackdown in 2009. It was a difficult inheritance for Jonathan but the problems have only grown more complex.”

Boko Haram’s attacks have become increasingly deadly in the last few months.

At least 65 people were killed in the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu, Yobe state, in a spate of gun and bomb attacks in November.

A bomb attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital Abuja on Christmas Day, claimed by Boko Haram, killed 37 people and wounded 57.

In a Reuters interview in late December, National Security Adviser General Owoye Andrew Azazi said officials are considering making contact with moderate members of shadowy sect via “back channels”, even though explicit talks are officially ruled out.

Reuters.

Les explosions se sont produites vendredi aux alentours de 17h15, heure locale. Selon des témoins, une vingtaine de déflagrations ont été entendues en l’espace de quelques minutes.

De source diplomatique, il y a au moins un attentat-suicide. La police a confirmé que les attaques coordonnées s’étaient produites dans huit sites de la mégalopole du nord du Nigeria.

Des commissariats, les bureaux de l’immigration et le quartier des services secrets ont notamment été visés. A la suite des déflagrations, des échanges de tirs se sont déroulés entre assaillants et forces de l’ordre pendant plusieurs heures. Aucune revendication pour le moment mais les soupçons pèsent sur la secte islamiste Boko Haram.

Ces derniers mois le groupe a multiplié les attaques. Des attaques de plus en plus sophistiquées et de plus en plus fréquentes dans différentes localités du Nigeria.

Depuis les violences du jour de Noël qui ont fait 37 morts, Boko Haram a également entamé « une chasse aux chrétiens ». Jusque-là, la ville de Kano qui compte quelque 15 millions d’habitants, majoritairement musulmans, était épargnée par les attentats. Hier soir, le gouvernement de l’Etat a instauré un couvre-feu de 24 heures.

RFI