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city Kano killed at least 178 people, according to hospital staff. Kano is hundreds of kilometres west of Maiduguri, Boko Haram’s home town.
“Four members of Boko Haram sect involved in killings in Maiduguri and environs have been under surveillance of security agencies and have been shot dead in Pomomari area of Maiduguri yesterday (Sunday),” Colonel Victor Ebhaleme, an officer in the joint military task force, said in a statement.
“Various IED (improvised explosive device) materials prepared for detonation were recovered from their car.”
Residents in Kano, a city of more than 10 million people, began to return to work yesterday amid a heavy military presence as soldiers searched vehicles at dozens of checkpoints set up on the city’s wide, dusty streets.
President Goodluck Jonathan has been severely criticised for not getting a grip on Boko Haram, a group he says have infiltrated the police, military and all areas of government.
Meanwhile, police in Kano said they found eight cars packed with bombs yesterday.
“We have discovered eight bomb-laden cars in different areas of the city,” a senior police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“We are still facing serious security threats.”
The bombs found yesterday were all home-made and were left in cars abandoned by roadsides in the city, the police official said.
West African security experts met in Nouakchott yesterday on the threat posed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its possible ties to Islamist sect Boko Haram in Nigeria, a security source said.
Nigeria and Burkina Faso have been invited to the two-day meeting between Sahel states Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali which will end with talks between foreign ministers and intelligence chiefs today, the Mauritanian security source said on condition of anonymity.
Algeria’s African Affairs Minister Abdelkader Messahel told his country’s news agency APS on Sunday that Nigeria had been included to “evaluate the links between Aqim and Boko Haram” with a view to future co-operation. The Nouakchott meeting is the third in a series of bi-annual sessions between the Sahel nations’ security chiefs.
Intelligence chiefs will present a report on the “terrorist threat” in the region and the Committee of Joint Chiefs (Cemoc) set up in southern Algeria in 2010 will give an update on military co-operation, said Messahel.
Security has deteriorated across the Sahel desert strip in recent months.
This zone is difficult to patrol and monitor and Aqim has carried out many attacks on troops, kidnappings of Westerners and trafficking of various kinds, including drugs.
Aqim, which was started in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists who sought the overthrow of the Algerian government to be replaced with Islamic rule was, was linked to Al-Qaeda in 2006. – Reuters/AFP.
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