Lagos - Nigerian troops have clashed with suspected members of Islamist group Boko Haram while raiding an alleged hideout, leaving 11 dead, including a soldier and policeman, an official and local media said on Sunday.
The clash was the deadliest of a string of incidents over the weekend, including an explosion in the northern city of Kaduna as well as a shootout and an assassination of a local official in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.
Three police stations were also attacked on Saturday in the northeastern state of Yobe, leaving two people dead, according to police.
The violence came with the increasingly deadly insurgency being waged by Boko Haram, mainly in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, showing little sign of abating despite last month's bid to broker indirect talks with the government.
Scores of such attacks have occurred, with more than 1 000 people killed since 2009.
The clash that left 11 dead occurred Saturday in the Okene district of Kogi state, located in central Nigeria, after soldiers and police sought to raid the alleged hideout, said Jacob Edi, a spokesman for the state governor.
“There were some skirmishes between some hoodlums and the military,” Edi told AFP. “There are unconfirmed reports that some of them may be Boko Haram... A military person was confirmed dead and a (secret police) person.”
He could not say how many of the assailants were killed, though local media reported nine were dead and identified them as suspected Boko Haram members. Authorities were still searching for those who escaped, he said.
Edi said the raid occurred because soldiers wanted to defuse explosives said to be at the building, though local media gave varying accounts.
One report said the raid followed the discovery last week of an alleged bomb-making factory in another town in Kogi.
Military and secret police officials did not respond to requests for comment.
On Saturday night in the northeastern state of Yobe, suspected Boko Haram members attacked three police stations, burning two of them down.
The dead in those assaults included one of the attackers as well as a suspect being questioned at one of the stations at the time of the attack, police said.
On Sunday in Kaduna, police said a man sought to plant a bomb on a petrol tanker, but dropped it, causing it to explode prematurely.
The blast killed the bomber, who police said was dressed in rags to disguise himself, and the tanker was unaffected, according to police.
In Maiduguri on Sunday, soldiers engaged in a shootout with alleged Boko Haram members, killing two of the assailants, a military spokesman said.
Later in the afternoon, gunmen shot dead a local government official at his house in Maiduguri, the spokesman said. The gunmen fled with his car and remained at large.
Boko Haram's insurgency has raised deep concern in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.
An attempt to hold indirect talks between group and the government in March appears to have collapsed, with a mediator pulling out over leaks to the media and a purported Boko Haram spokesman saying they could not trust the government. - Sapa-AFP