17 killed during security operation in Nigeria (AP)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria ? A military official on Sunday said that 17 people, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed during a military and police operation against a radical Muslim sect in Nigeria's restive northeast.

Maj. Gen. Jack Nwachukwu Nwaogbo told journalists in the city of Maiduguri that a 13-year-old boy, five other civilians and 11 suspected members of a radical sect locally known as Boko Haram were killed during the operation on Saturday evening. He declined to comment on how they died.

Usman Abdullahi, the 36-year-old brother of a victim, said soldiers chased people in the streets for hours and shot at them. He said soldiers accused them of being sect members.

Nwaogbo said security forces launched a search operation after two suspected members threw two homemade bombs at patrol cars from a moving bus. He said the blasts wounded five soldiers.

An activist group, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said in a statement Sunday that the war against Boko Haram must respect the country's law.

Also Sunday the Nigerian Red Cross said a bomb blast killed three people outside a church in a city just north of Nigeria's capital.

Niger state police spokesman Richard Oguche said the blast went off Sunday at about 3 p.m. outside the All Christian Fellowship Mission in the city of Suleja.

Umar Mairiga, a Red Cross spokesman, said seven people were critically wounded.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, is responsible for a rash of killings targeting security officers, local leaders and clerics in Nigeria's northeast over the last year. They have also claimed responsibility for a bombing at the nation's police headquarters that killed two last month.

The capital bombing and other recent attacks outside Boko Haram's stronghold which have targeted beer gardens, have shown the group is broadening its reach.

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Associated Press writer Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110710/ap_on_re_af/af_nigeria_violence

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