Kano, Nigeria - Police in northern Nigeria have arrested 13 suspected Islamist sect members, including those believed responsible for a weekend ambush targeting officers, authorities said Wednesday.
Eight of the suspected members of the sect known as Boko Haram, which launched an uprising last year, were arrested in Maiduguri, while five others were arrested on the outskirts of the city of Kano.
"We succeeded in arresting eight suspected members of Boko Haram in their hideouts in the city following Saturday's gun attacks on police checkpoints in the city and the eight are suspected to have taken part in the attack," Borno state police commissioner Mohammed Jinjiri Abubakar told AFP.
Three cars that the alleged sect members used in carrying out the attacks were recovered from the suspects, Abubakar said.
The arrest of five suspected members of the sect in Kano followed a tip-off from residents who became suspicious of the men who recently moved to the area from Maiduguri, Kano state police spokesman Musa Magaji Majia told AFP.
"Our men recovered 59 audio tapes of the preaching of the late leader of the sect Mohammed Yusuf from the house the suspects were arrested in and investigation has commenced to get at their collaborators," Majia said.
Suspected sect members engaged in two separate shootouts with authorities over the weekend in Maiduguri, which was the centre of last year's uprising.
The sect has been blamed for a string of recent attacks, including shootings of police officers and raids on a prison and police posts.
Last year's uprising ended with a brutal police and military assault that left hundreds dead.