Nigerian security forces claimed to have defeated a well-armed Islamist sect after four days of bloody fighting that left hundreds dead and forced thousands to flee their homes in the northern town of Maiduguri.

Army soldiers captured Mohamed Yusuf, the leader of the sect, and took him to a barracks. He was later transferred to the police and shot dead in their custody. A spokesman said Mr Yusuf had tried to escape.

More than a thousand Nigerian soldiers were sent to reinforce police and troops were deployed in Maiduguri, Borno state, where the heaviest fighting has taken place. Military helicopters hovered as artillery shells rained down and tanks and armoured cars laid siege to Mr Yusuf’s home and mosque.

After storming the mosque yesterday, the army claimed to have killed at least 200 militants, bringing the total dead to about 600. The bodies of barefooted young men lay in the streets of Maiduguri but it was thought initially that the leader of the group had fled with hundreds of his followers.

Police said they had freed 95 women and children who had been held against their will by the fundamentalist sect.

Fighting erupted on Sunday when 70 members of an extremist Islamic sect, known as the Nigerian Taleban for its admiration of the toppled fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan, launched an armed assault on a police station in the northeastern city of Bauchi. Attacks then spread to three other northern states, including Borno.

The extremist group, also known as Boko Haram, meaning “books are forbidden”, emerged in 2003. It is opposed to Western values and wants to create a puritanical Islamic state.

“At the centre of their ideology is a total rejection of everything Western, from education to medicine to democracy to capitalism,” said Nnamdi Obasi, an analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “It is about the complete rejection of Western culture and life.”

The violence was sparked by an incident in June when members of the sect travelling to a funeral clashed with security forces over the wearing of crash helmets, said Mr Obasi, who has been investigating the group. Seventeen of its members were killed or wounded in the ensuing gun battle, prompting Mr Yusuf to swear revenge. The fighting since Sunday has focused on his home town of Maiduguri.

The population of 140 million in Nigeria is split approximately in half along religious lines, with Christians dominating in the south and Muslims in the north. In 2000 governors in a dozen northern states imposed Sharia but observers say that many did so only to win votes.

“People thought Sharia would be accompanied by social welfare schemes and this hasn’t happened,” Mr Obasi said. “People have not seen the dividends of Sharia, which has opened up the opportunity for radicals to step in and say we need to build a fully Islamic state to see the benefits.”

The Nigerian political elite is notoriously corrupt, the country’s vast oil wealth has failed to improve the lives of citizens and elections are stolen, not won. This, observers say, has led to a growing disenchantment with what is seen as a Western system of governance, particularly among jobless young men.

“The underlying issues of poverty, poor governance and corruption provoke different responses in different parts of the country but they are all symptoms of the same malaise: that Nigeria is not working,” said Antony Goldman, a West Africa expert at the London-based PM Consultants.

“Nigeria lurches from one crisis to another without tackling the underlying causes,” he added.

Human rights groups have for years criticised the Government’s heavy-handed response to security threats. Yesterday Shamaki Gad Peter, director of the Nigerian League for Human Rights, accused the security forces of killing and detaining innocent civilians as it tried to flush out the militants in Maiduguri. The worst atrocities have been committed in the oilfields of the Niger Delta. A crackdown on militants in May killed a still-unknown number of civilians before a government amnesty was announced this month.

Some fear that the fighting in the north could spread. Since the imposition of Sharia in 2000, sectarian violence has erupted with depressing regularity, claiming thousands of lives.

In November up to 700 people were killed in two days of religious murders in the city of Jos. “The volatility of the situation in northern Nigeria means it doesn’t need much of a spark to set off sectarian violence,” Mr Goldman said.

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