[img][/img]Suspected members of an Islamic sect, the Boko Haram, that launched an uprising last year in northern Nigeria have killed three police officers in two separate incidents in Kano State, authorities said yesterday.

The police are now also looking into whether the Boko Haram sect is responsible for at least four other similar killings, AFP gathered.

Suspicions have been raised over an incident in February as well, when a policeman guarding the house of an ex-governor of Yobe State, now a senator, was killed by unidentified gunmen.

The latest killings occurred on Wednesday night. In Yobe State, two motorcycle-riding gunmen shot and killed a police constable outside the state governor’s residence he was guarding, state Police Commissioner, Mamman Sule, told AFP.

Two policemen were shot and killed by four gunmen dressed in black and riding motorcycles in Maiduguri, in neighbouring Borno State, as they were on their way to work, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
The gunmen took the officers’ rifles, he added.

The commissioner and police officer both said the gunmen were suspected to be members of Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sin” in local dialect.

“I see the killing as a reprisal attack by those members of the Boko Haram sect who have started resurfacing,” Sule said by telephone from the state capital, Damaturu.
The police officer said authorities were now looking at similar killings that have occurred in Maiduguri in recent months to determine whether the Islamists were behind them.

“This brings to six the number of police personnel killed in similar circumstances by motorcycle-riding gunmen in the last two months,” the officer said.
He said police first believed the killings to be carried out by armed robbers. They “now strongly suspect members of the outlawed Boko Haram elements as the masterminds,” the officer said.

Last year’s uprising by the group also known as the Nigerian Taliban began with attacks on police posts.
It was crushed by a police and military assault, with hundreds eventually killed and the sect’s headquarters and mosque left in ruins.
Its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was captured alive and then killed on July 30 last year by police, who said he was trying to escape.

Police also insist that Yusuf’s deputy, Abubakar Shekau, was killed last year, though he recently appeared on video issuing new threats. Police say the clips are digital mock-ups.

Sule said police in Damaturu had arrested two suspected Boko Haram members they say were downloading speeches by Yusuf on mobile phones.

At the time of the one-year anniversary of the uprising in July, authorities in Maiduguri, where the sect was based, insisted there was no threat of attacks, but security was tightened and intelligence agents blanketed the city.

One man claiming to be a sect member told AFP in an interview that the group had gone underground since the assault last year and was no longer centred around Maiduguri.