Nigeria troops kill Islamist militant in restive city

Soldiers in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri killed a suspected member of the Boko Haram Islamist sect and wounded two others on Wednesday after repelling an attack, the army said. "The JTF (Joint Task Force)... at about 11:15 hours (1015 GMT) today... successfully repelled a suspected Boko Haram attack on one of its locations," an army spokesman said in a statement. "One Boko Haram terrorist was killed, two injured, two arrested," he said. No soldier or civilian was killed or injured in the encounter that lasted less than five minutes, he said, without giving further details. Soldiers in Nigeria's largest northern city of Kano on Sunday killed four suspected members of the sect in a raid on their hideout, the army said. Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and the home base of Boko Haram, has seen some of the worst violence blamed on the extremist sect, which has focused its attacks on the mainly Muslim north. Boko Haram's increasingly bloody insurgency has claimed more than 1,000 lives since mid-2009.