Police repel Nigerian Islamist attack

Kano, Nigeria - Police in northeast Nigeria's Borno state have repelled an attack on a police post by suspected Islamists, killing one and arresting 11 others, they said Sunday.

“A large group of gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram attacked the mobile police base yesterday around 17:00 hours but the attack was repelled,” state police spokesman Samuel Tizhe told AFP.

“One gunman was killed in the shootout and 11 were arrested while two bags containing Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were abandoned by the fleeing attackers,” he said.

He said the incident happened in Bama, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Maiduguri, the hotbed of recent deadly attacks by the Islamist Boko Haram sect which have claimed hundreds of lives.

The radical Islamist sect has also targetted the police and other symbols of authority in Nigeria in recent months.

Boko Haram has said it wants to create an Islamic state across Nigeria's deeply-impoverished mainly Muslim north but some analysts believe there are different factions with varying interests.

Diplomats have said some sect members have sought training abroad, but there has been no evidence of operational links with foreign groups.

Two Europeans Ä a Briton and an Italian - kidnapped im May by gunmen suspected to be a splinter group of Boko Haram were killed on Thursday in a failed Nigerian-British military operation to free them in the northwestern town of Sokoto. - Sapa-AFP