Thousands flee Nigeria violence

30/07/2009| IslamWeb

Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands have been forced to flee their homes in northern Nigeria amid continued fighting between government forces and fighters seeking Islamic law across the country.

Apollus Jediel, a relief official, said that at least 1,000 people ran from their homes in the northern city of Maiduguri on Wednesday, as army soldiers laid siege to a Boko Haram compound.

They joined 3,000 people who had already fled their homes amid the clashes across northern Nigeria, he said.

At least 30 people were killed in fresh clashes in the northern state of Yobe on Wednesday, a police source said.

Wednesday's violence came after the army shelled a Mosque and the home of Mohammed Yusuf, the group's alleged leader, in Maiduguri, which is the capital of Borno state.

Boko Haram opposes Western-style education and has said it wants to lead an armed insurrection and rid society of "immorality" and "infidelity".

'Under control'

Umaru Yar'Adua, Nigeria's president, has vowed that the group will be hunted down and punished.

He said that the military operation currently under way would "contain them once and for all" and that "they will be dealt with squarely and forthwith".

Before leaving on a trip to Brazil on Tuesday, Yar'Adua said that the situation was "under control".

But fresh fighting broke out in Maiduguri following the assault on the home of Yusuf.

Dozens of people took shelter from the bombardment in a local police station.

"It is the first time in my life that I hear this kind of mortar shelling," said one man, who had taken cover there, along with his wife and three daughters.

"I thought they targeted my house."

An AFP correspondent reported witnessing soldiers shooting three young men dead at point blank range close to the city's police headquarters.

The men, who had just been arrested, were seen kneeling and pleading for their lives before being shot.

Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege, reporting from Nigeria's capital, Abuja, said there had been an intensification of the assault on members of Boko Haram.

She said the president had made it clear that those caught perpetrating violence or working with the fighters would be killed.

Nigeria's 140 million people are nearly evenly divided between Christians, who dominate the south, and the primarily northern-based Muslims.

Islamic law was implemented in 12 northern states after Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 following years of military rule.

PHOTO CAPTION

Bodies and their belongings lay in the streets of Maiduguri on Wednesday.

Al-Jazeera