MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA — The Nigerian army launched an assault Tuesday against "Taliban" militants fighting to establish radical Islamic rule in the north of the country, in an escalation of clashes that reportedly have left hundreds dead.
The rebels, armed with machetes, guns and bows and arrows, had attacked police stations and targeted police and government officials in the predominantly Muslim north Sunday and Monday.
In response, President Umaru Yar'Adua sent in the army to the city of Maiduguri to shell the home of Mohammed Yusuf, the soft-spoken preacher who leads the Boko Haram sect, known here as the Taliban. The army also attacked a mosque in the city.
Black smoke hung above Maiduguri, which throbbed with machine-gun and mortar fire, as the soldiers moved in. Gunfire continued overnight.
Shops and other businesses were closed. Children at a school near the militants' headquarters fled in terror. Many residents took shelter in the Maiduguri police headquarters, which had been attacked Monday in one of a series of apparently coordinated assaults in four northern states.
"It is too frightening to stay in my house," said Hamisu Balarabe, 38, a government employee huddled with others at the station. "It felt like the mortars would land in my house. I have never heard such a terrifying sound."
The bodies of at least 30 militants lay on the ground outside the police headquarters Tuesday. But a police official, speaking anonymously to The Times because he was not authorized to comment, said 197 corpses had been lined up on the ground Monday and since removed. Most of the dead were militants, he said.
Yusuf's fate was not known. Authorities gave no official casualty figures, but reports from journalists, witnesses and police officers speaking unofficially indicated that hundreds have died.
"Fighting is still going on; therefore, we cannot give any casualty figures," Maiduguri police spokesman Isa Azar said Tuesday.
"These troublemakers were daring enough to attack the police headquarters on Monday morning," he said. "They came in their hundreds, well armed, with guns. We had to fight very hard to repel the attack."
Militant attacks and religious and ethnic violence are common in Nigeria, often leaving dozens or hundreds dead. Analysts, however, were caught by surprise both by the scale of the violence and by how well armed and coordinated the militants were.
