Gunmen in Maiduguri, northestern Nigeria, suspected of being members of Boko Haram Islamic sect, shot dead a prison guard Thursday, police said.

In a separate incident in the same city, sodliers were involved in a gun battle with suspected Islamists.

Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot and killed the prison guard as he was waiting to pick his boss’ children outside a school, Lawal Abdullahi, police spokesman for Borno state, told AFP on the phone from Maiduguri.

“The prison warden was at the wheel outside the private school his superior’s children attend, waiting to take them home when he was shot and killed by the attackers we suspect to be members of Boko Haram, who then burnt him along with the car,” Lawal said.

Officials have blamed the group for bomb attacks and shootings targetting military and police personnel, community and religious leaders and politicians and in recent months the group has concentrated its activities in Maiduguri.

Boko Haram, which means ‘western education is sin’ in a local dialect, launched a short-lived uprising in parts of the north in 2OO9 in a doomed bid to establish an Islamic state.

It was crushed in a military crackdown that saw hundreds of people killed — many of them sect members — and its headquarters and mosque destroyed in Maiduguri, where most of the violence had occurred.

In an earlier separate incident, soldiers engaged a group of suspected Islamists in a shootout that lasted for about 10 minutes, but there were no reported casualties, Maiduguri army spokesman Abubakar Abdullahi said.

“The gunmen fled when they realised our men had superior fire power, leaving behind one of their rifles,” Abdullahi said.

Source : AFP