Thousands shelter in barracks after Nigeria unrest

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Thousands of Nigerians sheltered in barracks in the northern city of Maiduguri Tuesday after days of clashes involving Muslim rebels which residents said had killed at least 100 people.

Sporadic gunfire rang out overnight in the city, the capital of Borno state, despite a curfew after clashes in which members of a local Islamic group burnt churches, a police station and a prison and set off petrol bombs near residential areas.

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

Residents said youths armed with machetes, knives, bows and arrows, locally made hunting rifles and home-made explosives had attacked police buildings and anyone resembling a police officer or government official, causing hundreds of families to flee.

"When we heard shooting and saw people running we just packed the family and joined them," said Sunny Nwankwo, a journalist who fled to one of two barracks in the city sheltering thousands of civilians.

Streets around the main market and in some residential areas in the Lamisula neighbourhood were deserted Tuesday.

"I saw more than five big police trucks loaded with dead bodies ... The bodies are certainly more than 100," Maiduguri resident Gana Marari told Reuters by telephone.

"We kept hearing sporadic gunshots and explosions despite the curfew ... but from the look of things the police and the military are in control of the situation because since this morning there has been relative calm," he said.

The violence began in Bauchi state Sunday after the arrest of some members of an Islamic group called Boko Haram, which opposes Western education and wants a wider adoption of Islamic Sharia law across Africa's most populous nation.

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

The government has estimated 55 people have been killed but security sources and residents say the toll is much higher. One Nigerian newspaper with reporters around the region put the death toll at over 150 in Borno and Kano states alone.

Armed police manned roadblocks and patrolled Kano's streets Tuesday but the city was calm. Soldiers and police enforced a night time curfew in Bauchi but there was no fresh unrest.

JOBLESS YOUTHS

The four northern states are among the 12 of Nigeria's 36 states that started a stricter enforcement of sharia in 2000 -- a decision that 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.

Locals say Yusuf's followers are largely illiterate youths and jobless students who have quit their university education in support of his anti-establishment preachings, but they say his views are rejected by most of the city's Muslim leaders.

"We do not believe in Western education. It corrupts our ideas and beliefs. That is why we are standing up to defend our religion," a senior member of the group, Abdulmuni Ibrahim Mohammed, told Reuters Monday after his arrest in Kano state.

More than 200 ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side in Nigeria, a country of around 140 million people, although civil war left one million dead between 1967 and 1970 and there have been bouts of religious unrest since then.

The violence is unconnected to insecurity in the Niger Delta further south, where years of attacks by militants who say they want a fairer share of the country's natural wealth have slashed output from the mainstay oil industry.

President Umaru Yar'Adua has ordered heightened security in the affected northern regions and directed police to take all necessary action to contain and repel the militants.

More than 50 people were killed and over 100 arrested in Sunday's clashes in Bauchi, prompting the state governor to impose a night time curfew on the state capital.

(For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ )

(Additional reporting by Mike Oboh in Kano, Ardo Hazzad in Bauchi and Felix Onuah in Abuja; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood)