AFP has reported that soldiers on special duties to flush out members of the dreaded sect, Boko Haram, killed four suspected members of the group when they attacked a military checkpoint in Maiduguri, Borno State.
“Our men had an encounter with gunmen we believe to be members of Boko Haram. The gunmen attacked one of our checkpoints and engaged our men in a shootout, and in the process four of the attackers were killed,” Colonel Victor Ebhaleme said.
“Five others were wounded. One soldier was shot and wounded in the attack,” he told AFP from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state.
Earlier, residents said that suspected Islamist gunmen on Tuesday shot dead two soldiers and four civilians in violence-wracked Maiduguri but that troops fired indiscriminately.
They said that a group of suspected members of Boko Haram opened fire on a Nigerian military checkpoint in the Ajilari Cross area of Maiduguri, killing the two soldiers and wounding a third, prompting a military siege in the area, with residents accusing troops of indiscriminate shooting of civilians.
“Some gunmen came in a car and opened fire on soldiers at the checkpoint,” said a witness, Buni Kyari. “Two soldiers were killed in the attack and one was shot in the thigh.”
A medical source at the University of Maidugueri Teaching Hospital said the bodies of four civilians and two soldiers were taken to its morgue.
“We have received four bodies of civilians and two soldiers brought from Ajilari Cross with bullet wounds,” the source said.
Residents of Maiduguri had accused soldiers of shooting civilians and burning their homes following attacks blamed on Boko Haram, accusing them of complicity with the sect, but soldiers had always denied such charges.
Boko Haram has been blamed for deadly attacks in recent months targeting the military, a cleric opposed to the sect and a suspected police informant in the town.
Also Tuesday, suspected sect members shot dead a police corporal and dumped his body at an abattoir in the town of Mubi in Adamawa State.
Gunmen killed 17 Christian mourners in Mubi earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Defence, Haliru Mohammed, has said that soldiers deployed on the streets of some Nigerian cities in the wake of the protest over the withdrawal of subsidy on petrol will remain in place until the government feels sufficiently satisfied that situation had returned to normal.
Mohammed said the soldiers will be taken off the streets “as soon as things are brought back to normal.”