No fewer than 70 members of a fundamentalist Islamic sect, Boko Haram were reported killed in the early hours of Sunday as the group engaged security agents in a bitter battle in Bauchi, capital of Bauchi State.
Already, a dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed on the state capital just as 176 suspected members of the radical group have been arrested by the police. 15 persons who sustained varying degrees of injuries in the clash are said to be receiving medical attention in different hospitals in Bauchi.
Bauchi State Police Command has confirmed 39 deaths. Eye-witnesses said, however, that the dead are more than that number. Awwal Isa, a nurse at the Bauchi Specialist Hospital, told AFP that a total of 42 bodies had been deposited at the hospital.
(…) The radical sect made its debut in 2004 when it set up a base dubbed Afghanistan in Kanamma village in northern Yobe State, on the border with the Niger Republic, from where it attacked police outposts and killed police officers. Its membership is mainly drawn from university dropouts.
One of the leaders of the group, Aminu Tashen-Ilimi, had told AFP in a 2005 interview that the group’s mission was to lead an armed insurrection in a bid to rid the society of immorality and infidelity.
BBC reports that the toll of dead people has risen to 150:
Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militants staged three attacks in northern Nigeria, taking the total killed in two days of violence to 150.
A BBC reporter has counted 100 bodies, mostly of militants, near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.
Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire.
Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools.
The preacher, Mohammed Yusuf, says Western education is against Islamic teaching.
There has also been an attack in Wudil, some 20km (12 miles) from Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.
(…) Mr Yusuf’s followers in Bauchi are known as Boko Haram, which means “Education is prohibited”.
Well, it’s not a very good point to start when you defend the prohibition of education…
More here:
In northern Nigeria, Islam dominates in all aspects of life: Islamic courts, Islamic police oversee “good manners” such as wearing of decent clothes by students in certain states, strict censorship of films produced locally in what is dubbed Kannywood.
Police also see to the separation of the sexes in public places, not to mention the ban on alcohol consumption and homosexuality.
Women are treated as second class citizens.
The socio-political pressure is very strong and constitutes, according to analysts who spoke to AFP, a major handicap to modernisation, economic and cultural development.
A typical dramatic example was the refusal, in 2003, of Muslim leaders in the region to support a UN-inspired anti-polio drive, denouncing it as a “plot” by the United States to sterilise Muslims (this would be laughable if it weren’t for the children who could be NOW infected with polio thanks to these idiots….
).
The programme was then halted for 13 months.
ADNKronos reports:
Islamic Sharia law is in place across northern Nigeria but there is no history of Al-Qaeda linked violence in the country. Nigeria’s 140 million people are split almost equally between Muslims and Christians and the two groups generally live peacefully side by side, despite occasional outbreaks of communal violence.
This is the proof that terrorists “militants” will never stop, they will always find an excuse to continue their stupid violence “just struggle”. Here we see a country where Shariah Law is applied, but as there are Christians, these Boro Talibans protest about education AND:
They accuse the state government of preventing them from publicly practising their religion or seeking converts.
This part about seeking converts is linked to their call to forbid Western education. Anybody listening?
* They have also torched a church. Convert or else… I’ll torch your church, isn’t it? And if it’s with you inside, even better…. What a way of seeking converts 
Tags Technorati: Nigeria, Boko Haram, Islamism, violence,
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[...] 30 tags: Bauchi, Nigeria, protect the children, Yal Kala-Kato by Claudia Firstly it was Boko Haram sect. Now, it’s Yan Kala-Kato: Atiku Yusif Kafur, Bauchi State Police Commissioner, told a press [...]