[size=14pt]33 dead in clashes in northern Nigeria: Red Cross[/size]
AFP

33 dead in clashes in northern Nigeria: Red Cross AFP/File – Some members of the Islamic fundamentalists were regrouped after they were arrested during a crossfire …
55 mins ago

BAUCHI, Nigeria (AFP) – Thirty-three people died in clashes between joint military-police forces and suspected members of an Islamist sect in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi, a Nigerian Red Cross official said Monday.

"We have so far evacuated 30 bodies of suspected members of the Kala-Kato sect to the morgue at the Bauchi Specialist hospital along with two bodies of soldiers and a policemen, making 33," Adamu Abubakar told AFP.

He said that a military-police joint force "invaded" the Zango neighbourhood Monday afternoon and engaged the sect members in a fight.

"This afternoon, a military and police joint team invaded the neighbourhood the group uses as its base and engaged them in a fight, killing 30," Abubakar said.

The attack centered around the house of the leader of the sect, he added, but did not give the leader's name of the sect leader.

Two residents in Bauchi on Monday morning told AFP that they saw four corpses -- two soldiers and a policemen in uniform and another person in ordinary clothing -- lying on the streets in the troubled Zango district.

One of the residents, Adamu Shehu, said they were killed in separate attacks by members of the radical Islamic sect as they were passing through Zango district.

"Members of the group had a fiery preaching session yesterday night during which they attacked government and Western education," Shehu said.

Another resident also said that soldiers have besieged the troubled area.

In July at least 800 people were killed when security forces crushed an uprising in Bauchi, Kano, Yobe and Borno states in the Muslim-dominated north of Nigeria by members of another radical sect, Boko Haram.

Kala-Kato, also known as Maitatsine, is a radical Islamist sect existing in several parts of northern Nigeria for decades.

A religious uprising triggered by its members in 1980 in the northern city of Kano and in Yola in 1992, claimed thousands of lives.

The former leader of the Maitatsine sect, Mohammed Marwa Maitatsine, an Islamic scholar who originated from neighbouring Cameroun and later settled in Kano, was killed by security forces in December 1980.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091228/wl_africa_afp/nigeriaunrestreligionislam_20091228202138