3:25pm UK, Tuesday July 28, 2009

Clashes between security forces and Muslim rebels in a northern Nigerian city have killed 103 people over the past two days, police have said.

Maiduguri prison after it was set on fire by an Islamic group

Isa Azare, Maiduguri police command spokesman, said 90 of the dead were members of the Boko Haram Islamic rebel group.

He continued that eight police officers, three prison officials and two soldiers had also been killed.

Sporadic gunfire was heard overnight in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, despite a curfew.

Security restrictions were imposed after members of a local Islamic group burned churches, a police station and a prison and set off petrol bombs near residential areas.

The rioters are supporters of a radical Islamic preacher, who critics say has whipped students and jobless youths into an anti-establishment frenzy in recent years.

People living in the area said they had spotted youths armed with machetes, knives, bows and arrows, locally made hunting rifles and home-made explosives.

The youngsters reportedly attacked police buildings and anyone resembling a police officer or government official, causing hundreds of families to flee.

Two army barracks in the city have been sheltering thousands of civilians.

The violence began in Bauchi state on Sunday after the arrest of some Boko Haram members.

The movement opposes Western education and wants a wider adoption of Islamic Sharia law across Africa’s most populous nation.

The unrest then spread to the states of Borno, Kano and Yobe, all located in Nigeria‘s Muslim-dominated north.

The four northern states are among the 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states that started a stricter enforcement of Sharia in 2000.

The move has alienated sizeable Christian minorities and sparked bouts of sectarian violence that killed thousands.

Maiduguri is the home of Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of Boko Haram – which means “educated is prohibited” – and the city appears to have borne the brunt of the unrest.