KADUNA, Nigeria | Thu Jan 3, 2013 8:26am EST

KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed four people and burned down a police station in northeast Adamawa state, the police said on Thursday, the latest such attack in a region where Islamist sect Boko Haram has its stronghold.

A soldier, a policeman, a civilian and her grandchild were killed by unknown gunmen and a local government office was destroyed in the town of Song, near the border with Cameroon, Adamawa police spokesman Mohammed Ibrahim told Reuters. He said it happened around midnight on Wednesday.

At least 37 people have now died in Nigeria's northeast in the last 10 days alone in violence presumed to be linked to Islamist militancy, the biggest threat to stability in Africa's main oil exporter.

There was a similar attack in another town in Adamawa last week when police said one person was killed, although local media reports, quoting eye-witnesses, said 20 died.

Authorities in the northeast have in the past played down their own casualties in fighting with Boko Haram.

The sect, which is loosely based on the Afghan Taliban, killed hundreds last year in a campaign to impose sharia, or Islamic law. Nigeria's more than 160 million people are split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.

Boko Haram's violence remains focused mostly on security forces in the northeast, although its attacks have spread across the north and to the capital Abuja.

President Goodluck Jonathan has been unable to stop the rebellion despite waves of military offensives in the northeast and other parts of northern and central Nigeria where Boko Haram has a strong presence.

Jonathan said this week that most suspects behind major bombings in Nigeria had been arrested and attacks by what he called "terrorists" would be over soon.

Around 3,000 people have been killed in violence linked to Boko Haram since the group's uprising in 2009, human rights groups say.

(Reporting by Isaac Abrak; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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KADUNA, Nigeria | Sun Dec 23, 2012 6:15pm EST

KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru said on Sunday it was behind the kidnap of a French national last week, citing France's ban on full-face veils and its support for military action in Mali.

Ansaru sent a message to Nigerian reporters saying it was holding 63-year-old Francis Colump, who was taken on December 19 when around 30 gunmen attacked his residence in the remote northern town of Rimi, close to the Niger border.

The Nigerian police declined to comment on the claim but had already named Colump as the man abducted. He was working for French renewable energy firm Vergnet, which had been building Nigeria's first wind farm.

"The reason we kidnapped him is ... the law the government created which prohibits the wearing of niqab by French Muslim women. This is a denial of their religious rights," said the statement by the group, written in the local Hausa language.

"And again the participation of France in supporting the military attack on Muslims in northern Mali," the message signed by the group's purported leader Abu Usamata Ansari said.

In recent months France has led support for an African-led force to help defeat al Qaeda and other Islamist militants in northern Mali. Military deployment has the backing of the U.N. Security Council.

Last year, France banned full face veils.

Ansaru's full name is Jama'atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which roughly translates as "Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa".

The group, thought to be a breakaway from better known Islamist sect Boko Haram, has risen to greater prominence in recent weeks.

It claimed responsibility for a dawn raid on a major police station in the Nigerian capital last month, where it said hundreds of prisoners were released.

Britain last month put Ansaru on its official "terrorist group" list, saying it was aligned with al Qaeda and was behind the kidnap of a British and a Italian killed earlier this year during a failed rescue attempt.

Ansaru is thought to have loose ties to Boko Haram, which has killed hundreds this year in an insurgency focused mostly on Nigerian security forces, religious targets and politicians, rather than foreigners.

Western governments are increasingly concerned about Islamists in Nigeria linking up with groups outside the region, including al Qaeda's north African wing.

Colump's kidnap takes to nine the number of French citizens currently held hostage in Africa: seven others are in the arid Sahel belt and one in Somalia.

France's Intelligence agency said last week it believed "terrorist" links were behind the latest abduction.

"We are informing the government of France that we would continue to attack ... its citizens anywhere in the world as long as the government does not retract on its policies," Ansaru's statement said. ($1 = 0.7590 euros)

(Additional reporting and writing by Joe Brock; editing by Jason Webb)

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YENAGOA, Nigeria | Sat Dec 22, 2012 6:14am EST

YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Four South Koreans and a Nigerian who were abducted earlier this week in the oil-producing Niger Delta have been released, police said on Saturday.

The four foreign hostages were handed over to South Korean officials in the West African country late on Friday after police arrested suspects in the case.

"The victims were picked up from Azikoro village by men of the special security outfit at about 9 p.m. (2000 GMT)," Bayelsa Police Commissioner Kings Omire told Reuters.

Police spokesman Fidelis Odunna said: "They were released voluntarily because we had suspects in our custody and owing to a hit on their camp, they had to let the men go."

Omire said another Nigerian taken had already been released, meaning all six who were abducted were now free. The two arrested suspects were being interrogated, he said.

There was no immediate comment from either the South Korean government or Hyundai Heavy Industries, the conglomerate that employs the abducted workers.

Kidnapping is rife in Africa's top oil producer, making millions of dollars a year for criminal gangs. It is common across the south, especially in the Niger Delta.

Gunmen abducted two Lebanese men working for Nigerian construction company Setraco in Delta state this month, and killed a soldier protecting them.

The 83-year-old mother of Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was kidnapped on December 9 in Delta state but was freed five days later after a military search.

In the north of Nigeria, where Islamist militants operate, another form of kidnapping of foreigners has emerged this year.

A French national working for renewable energy company Vergnet was abducted close to the border with Niger on Wednesday.

French intelligence agency DCRI believes the kidnappers were linked to "terrorist activity". Islamist groups linked to Boko Haram have been behind similar kidnappings.

Boko Haram, which wants to impose strict sharia (Islamic) law in a country with a mixed Christian and Muslim population, has killed hundreds in an insurgency this year in northern Nigeria.

(Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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KANO, Nigeria | Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:08am EST

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - Two suicide car bombers attacked the offices of two mobile phone operators on Saturday in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, killing themselves but no civilians, police said.

India's Airtel and South Africa's MTN were the targets.

Islamist sect Boko Haram has previously blown up telephone masts and offices of phone companies, saying they help the security forces catch its members.

"The one who hit the Airtel office was shot by military men before the bomb exploded ... at the MTN office the car rammed into the fence but no civilians were killed," Ibrahim Idris, the chief of police in Kano, told Reuters. Both bombs went off.

A military source said one security guard was injured and has been taken to hospital.

MTN and Airtel Nigeria's parent company Bharti Airtel, India's top cellphone operator, gave no immediate comment.

The national emergency agency confirmed the bombings and said it was not aware of any civilian casualties. The security forces have played down the death toll in previous bombings.

At least 2,800 people have died in fighting in the largely Muslim north since Boko Haram launched an uprising against the government in 2009, watchdog Human Rights Watch says.

The sect wants to impose strict Islamic law on a country of 160 million people split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.

The group has previously targeted churches on Christmas Day and security has been increased in all the major northern cities, although security experts say given the scale of Christian worship in Nigeria they cannot protect everyone.

Kano, Nigeria's second-largest city after the southern commercial hub Lagos, was the site of Boko Haram's deadliest attack which killed at least 186 people in January in coordinated bombings and shootings.

Armed police have been guarding major churches in Kano this week and additional police checkpoints have been set up around the majority-Muslim city, a Reuters witness said.

Police in Kano said this week that their anti-terrorism squads have been searching houses and buildings they suspect to be hideouts of criminals and "terrorists".

Security experts say they believe Boko Haram is seeking to spark a religious conflict by targeting Christians in a country where ethnic violence has flared up periodically in recent years, in some cases killing hundreds in the space of hours.

A French national was kidnapped in far northern Nigeria, close to the border with Niger, this week by people France's intelligence agency said were "an organised group linked to a terrorist activity".

(Additional reporting by Isaac Abrak in Kaduna, Kaustubh Kulkarni in Mumbai and Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Richard Meares)

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