One Killed in Military Raid on Islamists in Northern Nigeria

Nigerian troops killed one person during a raid on a suspected hideout of Islamist group Boko Haram in the restive northeastern city of Damaturu, a hospital source and residents said Saturday.

Explosions and gunfire rocked the city, the capital of Yobe State on Friday, in the latest clampdown by the military Joint Task Force (JTF) on members of the sect, they said.

"We received the body of a young man killed in a raid on a suspected Boko Haram hideout by the JTF last night," a source at the Damaturu special hospital who asked not to be identified, told Agence France Presse.

The body, brought in by soldiers, had been riddled with gunshot wounds, said the source.

Residents also said Friday's incident had been a military raid on a Boko Haram base.

"The house was suspected to be a hideout of Boko Haram," one resident told AFP.

"We don't know the number of casualties because we are inside the house at the time of the incident."

State police spokesman Gbadegeshin Toyin told AFP late Friday: "There have been huge explosions and sporadic gunfire around (the) Shagari Low Cost area of the city.

"We still don't have details of what is going on but we have alerted our men to confront any eventuality," he said.

Damaturu, which is near Boko Haram's base of Maiduguri, is under a dusk until dawn curfew following running battles between troops and Islamists last month.

Nigeria's radical Islamists have repeatedly attacked the city, typically targeting the security services. A special joint police-armed forces unit meanwhile has started raiding suspected Boko Haram hideouts.

The Islamist group's insurgency, concentrated in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, has killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009.

Its deadliest ever attack, in the northern city of Kano, killed at least 185 people.

In recent attacks the movement has targeted Christian churches.