Authorities suspect an Islamist sect in northern Nigeria has begun using armed robberies to steal money to buy weapons to carry out attacks, an army spokesman said on Monday.
The sect known as Boko Haram has been blamed for a series of attacks in recent months, including raids on churches and police posts as well as hit-and-run shootings of police officers, mostly in the city of Maiduguri.
“Preliminary investigations suggest that recent armed robberies in the city are being carried out by members of the Boko Haram sect who are desperately in need of money to fund their operations,” Lieutenant Abubakar Abdullahi said.
“They are facing a serious cash squeeze following the stepping up of raids on the sect that has seen many of its financiers, who are mostly local traders, closing their businesses and fleeing the city.”
Last month, police in Maiduguri arrested 92 suspected sect members, including a 75-year-old man believed to be the group’s major source of financing.
Authorities suspect sect members in at least six robberies in Maiduguri over the past two months.
The latest occurred on Monday, when soldiers foiled an armed robbery by motorcycle-riding gunmen suspected to be sect members in which a gunman and a policeman were killed, Abdullahi said.
“They arrived in the business district on six motorcycles, 11 of them in all, armed with AK-47 rifles, and began to shoot sporadically,” he said.
“They were confronted by soldiers who succeeded in killing one of them while the rest fled through back streets, shooting dead a policeman returning from work in the process.”
More than 80 people have been killed in attacks blamed on the sect in the past seven months, according to security sources.
The sect also claimed responsibility for a series of Christmas Eve bomb blasts in central Nigeria that killed at least 80 people, but police cast doubt on the claim.
Boko Haram launched an uprising in 2009 put down by a police and military assault that left hundreds dead.