An unknown number of militants have been killed during air raids on their training camps in north-eastern Nigeria, officials say.

The army spokesman said jets and helicopter gunships had been used to attack several camps.

He told the BBC that a plane had been hit by anti-aircraft fire but had managed to returned to base.

States of emergency were declared this week in three north-eastern states hit by Boko Haram's Islamist insurgency.

Meanwhile, explosions and gunfire have been heard overnight in Katsina state.

Residents have told the BBC's Hausa service that banks, police stations and prisons were destroyed in the town of Daura, near the border with Niger.

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Every camp is under attack”

Brig Gen Chris Olukolade
Military spokesman
They said they had seen the bodies of five members of the security forces and three militants, but there has been no official confirmation of casualties.

Mobile phone networks were not functioning in many parts of north-east Nigeria on Thursday.

A security official told the AP news agency that the mobile phone service had been shut down during the military operation.

Militants have previously attacked mobile phone masts in the area in an effort to disrupt communications.

Residents staying inside
Some of the camps hit by air raids were in the Sambisa Game Reserve, about 70km (45 miles) south of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, where the militants first emerged in 2009, said Nigerian military spokesman Brig Gen Chris Olukolade.



"A number of insurgents have been killed. It is not just Sambisa, every camp is under attack. But we have not done the mopping-up operations on the ground to determine the numbers killed," he told the Reuters news agency.

The unnamed security official told AP that 21 people had been killed when the camps in Sambisa were shelled.

In January, the military said it had deployed helicopter gunships to destroy Boko Haram camps in the reserve, not far from Bama, where 55 people were killed in militant attacks last week.

Brig Gen Olukolade said the plane damaged by anti-aircraft fire had returned to base safely, while the "terrorist base" was subsequently "completely destroyed".

This is the first time Boko Haram has been reported to have used such heavy weaponry against aircraft.

A Maiduguri resident told the BBC that the city was unusually quiet on Friday, with most people staying inside.

Brig Gen Olukolade said "several thousand" troops had been sent to the three north-eastern states to tackle Boko Haram.

The three semi-desert states, which border Niger, Chad and Cameroon, are roughly the size of England or the US state of Illinois but have a population of just 10 million.

The BBC's Will Ross in Abuja says targeting Boko Haram's rural bases or training camps should pose no great challenge for the military; the hardest part of this campaign will be in urban areas like Maiduguri, where the militants are living among the civilian population.

The president said the army would take "all necessary action" to "put an end to the impunity of insurgents and terrorists", saying they had taken down the Nigerian flag and replaced it with a foreign emblem in some parts of the country.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is forbidden" in the local Hausa language, is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state in the north.

Although they often attack Christians and government targets, they have also killed many Muslim civilians.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22570071