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By Ibrahim Mshelizza Reuters August 01, 2009 01:44am NIGERIAN authorities collected hundreds of bodies from the streets of
the northern city of Maiduguri overnight following days of clashes with
members of a radical Islamic sect.
State government and health ministry officials piled the corpses, some
of them swollen after lying in the streets for days, onto open trucks as
police and soldiers patrolled. "As of yesterday we had more than 200 dead bodies," Aliyu Maikano,
northeastern zone disaster management officer for the Nigerian Red
Cross, told Reuters, adding that bodies were still being collected. The toll in Maiduguri brings to at least 300 the total number of people
killed in violence that has erupted in several states around northern
Nigeria since Sunday. The authorities are hoping the killing of sect leader Mohammed Yusuf,
whose Boko Haram movement wants a wider adoption of sharia (Islamic law)
across Africa's most populous nation, will bring an end to the six-day
uprising by his followers. Yusuf, 39, was shot dead while in police detention late on Thursday.
Officials have said he died in a shoot-out while trying to escape but
rights groups have condemned what appeared to have been an
execution-style killing. Hundreds of people gathered to see Yusuf's corpse, laid on the ground in
front of Maiduguri police headquarters alongside the bodies of other
presumed Boko Haram members. "I want to see the body of Mohammed Yusuf to know the man who has caused
us so much pain and hardship. May his soul rot in hell," said one
Maiduguri resident, Nasir Abba, in whose neighbourhood some of the
heaviest fighting took place. Eric Guttschuss, Human Rights Watch researcher for Nigeria, described
Yusuf's killing as "a shocking example of the brazen contempt by the
Nigerian police for the rule of law".
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