42 Dead in Clashes in Bauchi, Nigeria

Bauchi Clashes

Forty-two people were killed on Sunday when a radical Islamic extremist group attacked police officers iin Bauchi, Nigeria. It is said that the group is inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan, a hospital source said.

“We have received a total of 42 bodies,” Awwal Isa, a nurse at Bauchi Specialist Hospital in the northern city of Bauchi where the violence took place, told AFP by telephone.

They were victims of “fighting between security personnel and members of the Taliban,” he said, alluding to the sect founded in Nigeria in 2004 with a mission to set up a strict Islamic state in Nigeria.

There was gunfire exchanged between the two opposing side after a failed attack at dawn in the Dutsen Tenshin neighbourhood.

“Our men succeeded in repelling the dawn attack by the Taliban,” Bauchi police spokesman Mohammed Barau told AFP by telephone, adding that it appeared the assailants “wanted to steal weapons from the police station”.

“We have launched a manhunt for other members of the group that have fled,” Barau added.

Local journalists who went to Bauchi Specialist Hospital confirmed in the early hours of Sunday that there were 9 bodies in the hospital from the clashes. This number is estimated to be much higher currently.

Isa said that, initially, the hospital received nine bodies, followed by another 33. He added that one of the dead was a soldier.

More than 700 people died last November in Jos, capital of Plateau state, when a political feud over a local election degenerated into bloody confrontation between Muslims and Christians.

Source: Yahoo News