Senior leader of Boko Haram caught — police

Abuja: Nigeria's police said yesterday they captured a senior commander of the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram in Kano, the largest city in the north and scene of attacks this year that have killed hundreds of people.

Security sources also said that the man police say they caught, Sulaiman Mohammad, was known to be a leading Boko Haram figure in Kano. The sect has denied the arrest of senior members claimed by the police in the past.

"We made an arrest Friday based on intelligence reports concerning his hideout and he was arrested successfully with his wife and children in his hideout," the police commissioner in Kano State, Ebrahim Idris, told Reuters.

Violence

"He is now being interrogated by the security agents. He has been flown to Abuja. He is Sulaiman Mohammad, a Nigerian, Yoruba by tribe. He is the operational leader of the sect in Kano."

The Yoruba tribe is mostly based in the southwest, away from the focus of Boko Haram's violence in the north. The Yoruba are split between Christians and Muslims.

Idris said his officers had recovered explosives, ammunition and guns at Mohammad's hideout.

Gunmen killed at least 15 people and wounded many more at a Christian service in Kano last month and in January coordinated bomb and gun attacks in Nigeria's second city killed 186, the most deadly strikes yet claimed by Boko Haram.

Boko Haram, which wants to carve out a Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has many factions and the leaders of the group in Kano often work independently from senior members in its home base in the northeast.