Militants free hundreds of inmates in Nigerian jail attack

SUSPECTED members of an militant group have freed hundreds of inmates in an attack on a prison in northern Nigeria that led to a fierce gun battle with authorities, officials said yesterday.

Authorities said more than 700 inmates escaped in the Tuesday night attack, including all 150 alleged group members being held there. The group blamed for the attack, Boko Haram, had launched an uprising in Nigeria's north last year.

Bauchi state police commissioner Danlami Yar'Adua reported four people killed, including a soldier, a police officer and two residents.

Twenty inmates were re-arrested, he said, while another 11 suspected group members were also detained.

"The prison had 762 inmates at the time of the attack," Bauchi state prison service director Mohammed Ahmed told AFP, adding that "732 escaped, leaving 30."

Referring to the group, he said, "all the Boko Haram suspects on remand have escaped. There were 150 of them."

About a dozen military and police checkpoints were set up on the road toward the city of Bauchi, where the attack occurred, yesterday.

A prison guard had earlier described the assault on the prison.

"They came in large numbers, heavily armed, and began shooting at the prison gate," the guard, Salisu Mohammed, said. "Some of us were hit while others fled." He said the attackers "gained access and moved from cell to cell, breaking in and freeing the inmates. They set fire to a section of the prison and burnt the vehicles parked outside the gate."

One resident said officers were among those shot.

"They shot dead a handful of policemen at the gate and forced their way in," resident Isa Hassan said by phone, saying he lived across from the prison.

"From my house, I could see bodies and injured being loaded into a truck."

Residents said calm returned to the area on Tuesday night, though military and police were occasionally firing into the air as they locked the area down.

"There was heavy fighting between the attackers and the security forces which lasted for almost an hour. It was quite terrifying," resident Usman Ahmad said.

Residents took cover to avoid being caught in the crossfire and to keep from being mistaken for one of the group members, he said.

Recent shootings had signalled the sect might be preparing to strike again in Africa's most populous nation, roughly divided in half between Christians and Muslims.

Last year's uprising by Boko Haram began with attacks on police posts, and police were among the victims of the recent attacks by motorcycle-riding gunmen in northern Nigeria.

The 2009 uprising was crushed by a police and military assault, with hundreds eventually killed and the group headquarters left in ruins.

Tuesday's attack came on the same day officials announced January 22 as the date for Nigeria's presidential vote and was an ominous sign in a country where elections have often been tainted by violence and rigging.

It also occurred just before the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan and just ahead of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sin" in local Hausa dialect, had fought for the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria. The vast majority of Muslims in the country reject the group's hardline ideology, and many observers say the group grew out of frustration with Nigeria's widespread corruption, poverty and lack of opportunities for youths.AFP