Africa News
Reports: Nigerian police arrest 30 members of deadly Islamist sect
Aug 28, 2009, 10:26 GMT
Nairobi/Abuja - Nigerian police have arrested 30 alleged members of an Islamist sect involved in violence that claimed the lives of over 700 people last month, reports said Friday.
The Boko Haram sect attacked police stations across northern Nigeria in late July but was almost completely wiped out during a police and military crackdown.
Police officials told Nigerian media that the 30 men, who fled the Boko Haram base in the northern town of Maidugri, were arrested in nearby Adamawa State.
At least 10 of the suspects were believed to have received training in Afghanistan, police said.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with around 150 million inhabitants, is split between the Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.
Boko Haram, which is sometimes called the Nigerian Taliban and was formed in 2002, wanted to impose sharia, or Islamic law, across the whole of Nigeria and was also opposed to Western education.
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