Nigerian troops on Saturday clashed with suspected members of Islamist group Boko Haram while raiding an alleged hideout, leaving 11 dead, including a soldier and policeman, an official said.
The recent clash in the Okene district of Kogi state, after soldiers and police sought to raid the alleged hideout, said Jacob Edi, a spokesman for the state governor.
“There were some skirmishes between some hoodlums and the military,” Mr Edi said. “There are unconfirmed reports that some of them may be Boko Haram … A military person was confirmed dead and a (secret police) person.”
He could not say how many of the assailants were killed, though some reports said nine were dead and identified them as suspected Boko Haram members. Authorities were still searching for those who escaped, he said.
Mr Edi said the raid occurred because soldiers wanted to defuse explosives said to be at the building, though local media gave varying accounts.
One report said the raid followed the discovery last week of an alleged bomb-making factory in another town in Kogi.
Attacks in Yobe
On Saturday night in Yobe, suspected Boko Haram members attacked three police stations, burning two of them down.
The dead in those assaults included one of the attackers as well as a suspect being questioned at one of the stations at the time of the attack, police said.
Other attacks in Kaduna
On Sunday in Kaduna, police said a man sought to plant a bomb on a petrol tanker, but dropped it, causing it to explode prematurely.
The blast killed the bomber, who police said was dressed in rags to disguise himself, and the tanker was unaffected, according to police.
Two Boko Haram members killed in Maiduguri
In Maiduguri on Sunday, soldiers engaged in a shootout with alleged Boko Haram members, killing two of the assailants, a military spokesman said.
Later in the afternoon, gunmen shot dead a local government official at his house in Maiduguri, the spokesman said. The gunmen fled with his car and remained at large.
These violence are coming with the increasingly deadly insurgency being waged by Boko Haram, mainly in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, showing little sign of abating despite last month’s bid to broker indirect talks with the government.
Scores of such attacks have occurred, with more than 1000 people killed since 2009.
