By Daniel Flynn
Reuters Foundation
18 Apr 2007
KANO, Nigeria, April 18 (Reuters) - Nigerian troops fought a three-hour battle with Islamic militants on the outskirts of the northern city of Kano on Wednesday, a day after the militants attacked a police station and killed 13 officers.
Sustained bursts of automatic gunfire were audible at a military checkpoint on the edge of the Panshekara district. A fighter plane swooped over the area and a column of black smoke rose into the sky.
"A group of Islamic fundamentalists is fomenting trouble and the soldiers have been deployed to prevent them from engaging in any form of destruction of lives and property," army spokesman Colonel Mohammed Yusuf said by phone from the capital.
Troops set up a cordon around the district. Thousands of residents fled from the area.
One officer said: "There are still pockets of fighters in there and we are not allowing anyone to enter."
A senior police officer, who did not want to be named, said some soldiers had been killed in the battle, but there was no official confirmation.
The heavily armed militants burned down a police station on Tuesday, wounding two officers, and then ambushed and killed 13 police who came to investigate.
Residents said the militants were avenging the assassination of a hardline Muslim cleric at a mosque in Kano on Friday, which they blamed on the government.
The Secretary-General of Jama'atu Nasril Islam, Nigeria's largest Muslim organisation, said the militants, who use names such as "Taliban" and "al Qaeda", were not a recognised group.
"They use Islamic names to scare people and show their anger. Police should not be a target," Abdulkadir Orire said.
Kano has seen several bouts of ethnic and religious bloodshed over the last few years, and tensions are running high in the city of 6 million because of flawed state elections held on Saturday and a presidential vote on April 21.
It was not clear if the latest violence was election-related.
The attack was the second on a police station in northern Nigeria's biggest city in a week. Attackers killed a divisional police officer in the Sharada district last week but the motive for that incident was not clear.
Kano is one of 12 northern Nigerian states which introduced sharia law in 2000. The move by state governors alienated Christian minorities and sparked violence.
Southern Nigeria is predominantly Christian.