Teargas used on anti-US marchers in Nigeria

Police fired teargas tonight to break up a protest by hundreds of Nigerian Muslim youths decrying US-led airstrikes on Afghanistan…

Police fired teargas tonight to break up a protest by hundreds of Nigerian Muslim youths decrying US-led airstrikes on Afghanistan.

Several people were injured by trampling and at least three vehicles were set on fire during the demonstration.

Chanting anti-American slogans: "Americans are infidels" and "Leave Bin Laden alone," the marchers gathered near a mosque in Kano.

The protesters walked through city streets for more than an hour before eventually being confronted by police, who tried to block the marchers with a truck.

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The marchers surged towards the lorry, burning it and at least two other civilian vehicles and forcing police into a hasty retreat, witnesses and journalists said. The officers later regrouped and scattered the marchers.

Protesters said the rally had been organised by a group called Muslim Revolutionaries, believed to be an offshoot of a fundamentalist movement led by Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zak Zaky.

He is a well-known Islamic politician and cleric who was jailed in the 1990s by Nigeria's military junta for making illegal radio broadcasts calling for a fundamentalist Islamic state.

PA