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Policeman shot dead in northeastern Nigeria

04 January 2011 02:37 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. A policeman was shot dead in northeastern Nigeria on Monday, the latest in a string of violent attacks in one of the poorest areas of Africa’s most populous nation, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The officer was shot in the city of Maiduguri where an Islamist sect last week killed at least 16 people in a series of religiously motivated attacks, the police have said.
Over 90 suspects have been arrested.
"Corporal James was trailed by two people on a motorcycle when he disengaged from patrol duty this morning, and they shot him dead near police quarters in Gwange ward at about 9:45 am," police commissioner Mohammed Abubaker said.
Two days earlier suspected members of Islamist group Boko Haram set a church ablaze close to where Monday’s shooting took place, Abubaker said.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in Hausa -- the language spoken across northern Nigeria, is loosely modeled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan and wants Islamic law imposed throughout the West African country.
The sect claimed responsibility for Christmas Eve bombings in the central Nigerian city of Jos which killed at least 80 people and left more than 100 wounded, part of a wave of violence less than four months before presidential elections.
On New Year’s Eve, bombs in the capital Abuja killed four but no group has taken responsibility for the attacks and President Goodluck Jonathan has said the bombers identity is not yet known.
The surge in violence in the last week is testing Jonathan’s resolve ahead of ruling party primaries this month that are likely to be the most fiercely contested in more than a decade.