02 Aug 2009
A Nigerian military official suspects there are many foreigners among the dead killed in recent fighting between police and a radical Islamist sect, in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri.

"I know that there are a lot of foreigners among them. There are a lot of people that are not just Nigerians," Colonel Ben Ahanotu, of the Nigerian military said, without providing further details.

Ahanotu estimated around 700 people were killed in fighting, the toll was previously thought to be around 300.

Speaking from outside the smouldering compound of killed Boko Haram sect leader, Mohammed Yusuf, Ahanotu said on Saturday that mass burials have begun because bodies were decomposing in the heat.

The Islamist compound was destroyed this week by government troops.

The compound is one of the burial sites, he said.

Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, was largely quiet on Saturday, the streets had been cleared of bodies and blood spilled during five days of fierce fighting.

Banks and markets reopened, but sporadic violence continued.

Destruction was evident on Saturday only in some areas of the city: the police building was in ruins and smoke rose from the destroyed compound of the sect's leader, where bodies were now buried.

The compound was guarded by soldiers armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

A bloodied man, alleged to be a member of the sect, lay beneath a tree, his hands tied behind his back, guarded by the soldiers.

Borno Police Commissioner Christopher Dega said the members of the Boko Haram sect are likely in hiding and may be using the current calm to regroup.

The wave of violence began on Sunday July 26 in Bauchi and quickly spread to three other northern states, including Borno.

The sect, Boko Haram (name means "Western education is sacrilege") attacked police stations, churches and government buildings.

The group is seeking the imposition of strict Islamic Shariah law in Nigeria, a country of several religions.

Nigerian troops retaliated on Wednesday killing about 100 people, half of them inside the sect's mosque.

The bodies of barefoot young men littered the streets of Maiduguri on Thursday morning as security forces hunted militants.

An Associated Press reporter saw dead bodies piled into at least six trucks in the hospital's parking lot on Wednesday.

Mohammed Yusuf, head of the Boko Haram sect, was killed on Thursday after he was found hiding in a goat pen at his in-laws' home.

The details of his death remain murky.

Nigeria's Civil Rights Congress, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for investigations into Yusuf's death and other killings during the upheaval in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria.
3news.co.nz