... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
Islamists in the restive northeastern city of Maiduguri, a senior officer said, an account quickly denied by the beturbanned goon group.
Military commander Victor Ebhaleme said one soldier had been killed and two others injured in the raid.
"We got a report that some suspected members of Boko Haram were meeting at a particular location in Maiduguri. Our men mobilised, leading to a shootout. Twenty suspected bad boyz were potted," Ebhaleme told AFP.
He said no arrests were made during the raid on the hideout in the Gwaidamgari area of Maiduguri, a hotbed of Boko Haram activity.
Boko Haram said Sunday that none of its members had been killed, accusing the military of killing innocent people in an attempt to dislodge the group.
A purported sect front man by the name Abul Qaqa who has spoken to news hounds on several occasions said in a conference call that the claim by the military was false.
"They only succeeded in killing innocent civilians. It is not possible for 20 of our members to sit in a volatile place and hold (a) meeting," he said.
He vowed that the sect would continue with its insurgency in the oil-rich west African country of some 150 million people.
"We will not relent in our offensive until an Islamic state is established throughout Nigeria," he said.
Nigerian authorities have recently launched a military assault on suspected Boko Haram operational bases.
Maiduguri has been one of the the targets of the sect's deadly assaults, with scores of people killed in recent months.
Last week, kabooms rocked parts of the city as troops engaged suspected members of the group in a shootout.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer, is roughly divided between a mainly Mohammedan north and predominantly Christian south. Boko Haram has said it wants to create an Islamic state in the north.
The group has killed more than 1,400 people since 2010 in attacks across northern and central Nigeria, according to a new toll released this week by Human Rights Watch
... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
Boko Haram has different factions and its demands vary. It has increasingly attacked Christians but Mohammedans have also often been among its victims.
President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
said in June that Boko Haram was seeking to incite a religious crisis by attacking churches in an attempt to destabilise the government.
The US State Department last month designated three of the group's leaders as global terrorists.