Credit: Reuters
Two suspected Nigerian Islamist sect members were arrested on Thursday after
an attack which killed two people, the military said, as authorities stepped up
a crackdown on the increasingly violent group Boko Haram.
President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the northeast
and two other regions in Nigeria on Dec. 31, in an effort to contain the
growing insurgency from Boko Haram, which wants sharia law more widely applied.
"We have arrested two of the Boko Haram members who killed a man and
his son in Dala on Wednesday night. They left behind their handsets through
which we were able to trace them," said Colonel Victor Ebhemele,
operations officer of the joint task force operating in Borno state.
Dala is a ward in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, a remote dusty region
which sits on borders with Cameroon, Niger and Chad. These borders have been
closed as part of Jonathan's emergency measures.
Ebhemele said there were three bomb blasts in Maiduguri on Wednesday evening
but there were no casualties.
Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks across
Nigeria on Christmas Day, including one at a church near the capital Abuja that
killed at least 37 people and wounded 57.
