Suspected members of the outlawed Boko Haram sect on Friday attacked a police station, barracks and commercial bank in Damboa, around 100 km south of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, killing 13 persons.
Reuters reports that the attackers used explosives and assault rifles in the incident, in which eight civilians and five policemen died.
The attackers detonated explosives and opened fire on the divisional police headquarters in Damboa.
Police Commissioner, Borno State Command, Mohammed Jinjiri Abubakar, blamed Boko Haram, whose members have been blamed for almost daily killings in recent months, including frequent attacks on policemen, soldiers and local leaders.
”Police and military personnel have mounted a massive manhunt to arrest the more than 70 Boko Haram members believed to be involved in the attacks,” Abubakar told Reuters.
Police Deputy Superintendent Abba Lawan Kirawa confirmed the death of the 13 persons.
Members of the sect launched an uprising in 2009, attacking government buildings and leading to days of gun battles with the security forces in which as many as 800 people were killed.
The persistent insecurity in the region near Nigeria‘s northeastern borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara risks becoming President Goodluck Jonathan‘s biggest security headache, Reuters reports.
The group was blamed for a series of explosions at police stations last week and security in the capital Abuja has already been tightened ahead of Jonathan‘s inauguration on Sunday.
Gunmen in the state capital had on Thursday shot dead a prison guard. In a separate incident in the same city, sodliers were involved in a gun battle with suspected Islamists.
Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot and killed the prison guard as he was waiting to pick his boss‘ children outside a school, Lawal Abdullahi, spokesman for the state police command, told Agence France Press on the phone from Maiduguri.
”The prison warden was at the wheel outside the private school his superior‘s children attend, waiting to take them home when he was shot and killed by the attackers we suspect to be members of Boko Haram, who then burnt him along with the car,” Lawal said.
