Suspected jihadists using weapons and explosives entered a prison near the Nigerian capital and freed hundreds of inmates in an operation to release detained comrades, the government said on Wednesday.
The brazen attack on the outskirts of Abuja came hours after a presidential security convoy was ambushed in the northwest and is a fresh example of Nigeria’s security crisis.
Local residents reported loud explosions and gunshots near the high-security prison in Kuje, just outside the capital, late Tuesday.
Security forces cordoned off roads in the area early Wednesday.
Outside the prison, the burned-out wreckage of a bus and car marked the scene, and yellow police tape was stretched across a destroyed section of prison grounds.
“We know they are Boko Haram, they came specifically for their co-conspirators,” senior Interior Ministry official Shuaibu Belgore told reporters during a visit to the prison.
“Right now we’ve retrieved about 300 out of about 600 who came out of the prison cells.”
A security guard was killed when gunmen broke into the prison with high-level explosives.
“We heard gunshots on my street. We thought they were armed robbers,” said a local resident. “The first explosion came after the shooting. Then there was a second, and then a third.”
Belgore said some jihadists were housed in the general prison population and hundreds of criminal inmates escaped when the gunmen broke in.
Some prisoners surrendered while others were recaptured with military roadblocks erected around the prison.
Security forces turned around 19 re-arrested inmates back in a black van on Wednesday morning, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
Former senior police commander Abba Kyari, who is awaiting trial in Kuje in a high-profile drug smuggling case, is still in custody, said Prison Service spokesman Abubakar Umar.
– ‘Ambushes’ –
Nigeria’s security forces are fighting jihadists from Boko Haram and the Islamic State Province of West Africa (ISWAP) in the north-east of the country, where a 13-year conflict has killed 40,000 people and displaced 2.2 million others.
Nigerian officials sometimes use Boko Haram as a generic term to refer to jihadists or other armed groups.
The overstretched military is also battling heavily armed criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, who terrorize communities in the Northwest and central states with raids and mass kidnappings for ransom.
In the south-east of the country, troops are confronted with separatist militias demanding independent territory for the local ethnic Igbo population.
The Kuje prison raid came shortly after gunmen also raided a presidential security detail preparing for President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to his home state of northwest Katsina.
Buhari was not in the convoy, but two officers were slightly injured in the attack. It was unclear who was responsible.
“The attackers opened fire on the convoy from ambush positions but were repulsed,” the presidency said in a statement.
In the past there have been attacks on prisons in Nigeria, with gunmen trying to free inmates.
More than 1,800 prisoners were able to escape last year after heavily armed men used explosives to attack a prison in south-eastern Nigeria.
The attackers blasted their way into Owerri Prison in Imo State and engaged the guards in a gun battle before storming the prison. Imo State is in a region that is a hotbed for Separatist groups.
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