NIGERIAN DEATH TOLL RISES TO 700

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 2, 2009

MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA
The Nigerian authorities disregarded dozens of warnings about a violent Islamist sect until it attacked police stations and government buildings last week in a blood bath that killed more than 700 people, Muslim clerics and an army official said.

More than 50 Muslim leaders repeatedly called the police, local authorities and state security to urge them to take action against Boko Haram sect militants but their pleas were ignored, Imam Ibrahim Ahmed Abdullahi said.

“A lot of imams tried to draw the attention of the government,” Mr. Abdullahi said, drawing nods from the several other Muslim scholars sitting with him as he spoke Saturday in the battle-ravaged city of Maiduguri. “We used to call the government and security agents to say that these people must be stopped from what they are doing because it must bring a lot of trouble.”

On July 26, militants from the sect attacked a police station in Bauchi State, inciting a wave of militant violence that spread to three other northern states. The Nigerian authorities retaliated five days later by storming the group’s sprawling Maiduguri headquarters, killing at least 100 people in the attack, half of them inside the sect’s mosque.

About 700 people were killed in days of violence last week in Maiduguri alone, according to Col. Ben Ahanotu, the military official in charge of a local anti-crime operation.

The death toll from the violence in other northern areas was not known.

The imams were not the only ones to raise the alarm. Colonel Ahanotu said he recommended several times that action be taken against the group but received no orders to do so. “I complained a lot of times,” he said.

International concern is growing over the ability of Al Qaeda affiliates to cross the porous desert borders of countries like Niger into Nigeria.

It was not clear why the authorities did not act sooner. Boko Haram was not discreet and Mohammed Yusuf, its leader, had been arrested several times before, most recently in 2008 after his followers attacked a police station. Mr. Yusuf was killed Thursday.

Ali Modu Sheriff, the governor of Borno State in the notheast, said he was not sure he could bring enough evidence to court against the sect. “It’s not that people did not hear or that our government did not know that these followers of Mohamed Yusuf did exist,” he said. “They did exist, but we don’t know what they stand for.”

The Associated Press