Gunmen attack police station beyond Nigeria emergency zone
Gunmen stormed a police station and a bank in a town in
Nigeria's northwest, beyond a region covered by a military crackdown on a
Islamist insurgency, a sign the offensive could provoke violence by smaller
militant cells across the north.
It was not clear who carried out the attack.
Several gunmen were killed during a clash with police in the
remote town in Katsina state, army spokesman Ikedichi Iweha told Reuters,
without giving specific figures or police casualties.
Nigerian forces are trying to regain territory controlled by
increasingly well-armed Boko Haram Islamist insurgents in their northeastern
stronghold states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which were put under a state of
emergency by President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday.
Security experts believe a crackdown in the northeast could
push insurgent attacks into other regions, or awaken smaller cells that operate
in other parts of the north.
"It's difficult to tell if this is a criminal attack or
part of another Islamist cell," one security source said.
"There have been incidents in the past in Katsina but
it certainly hasn't been an insurgent stronghold."
Another security source said a bank was raided and prisoners
were freed from the police station.
Boko Haram, other Islamist groups like al-Qaeda linked
Ansaru and associated criminal gangs have become the biggest threat to
stability in Africa's second largest economy and top oil producer.
Thousands have been killed since Boko Haram launched an
uprising almost four years ago in an effort to create an Islamic state in a
country of around 170 million split roughly equally between Christians and
Muslims.
Violence has mostly happened far from economic centers such
as the commercial hub Lagos or political capital Abuja and hundreds of miles
away from oilfields in the southeast.
Military jets, helicopter gunships and thousands of troops
are involved in the current offensive, which may answer some critics who accuse
Jonathan, a southern Christian, of underestimating the severity of the crisis
in the Muslim north.
Rights groups are concerned the state of emergency will lead
to more abuses they have document by Nigerian forces.
Source: Reuters
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