Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo

LAGOS, January 5 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Nigerian police and army have put down an armed uprising by a group of students in the northeastern Nigerian state of Yobe, who were seeking to establish an Islamic state, according to press reports Monday, January 5.

State Governor Bukar Ibrahim said many "Taliban-oriented radicals" seeking an Islamic state had been killed, the BBC News Online reported.

The mob pulled down the Nigerian flag at a state building they occupied and raised that of Afghanistan, the British newscaster claimed.

Government spokesman Ibrahim Jirigi was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that at least six of the rebels died in five days of clashes in three towns in predominantly Islamic Yobe state, including the capital Damaturu.

Jirigi identified the group as Al Sunna Wal Jamma, which has campaigned for the past years for an Islamic state.

The uprising has reportedly begun early last week when the rebels attacked police stations in a number of towns, burned buildings and stole large quantities of weapons, according to the BBC.

The bloody battles sent scores of families fleeing the targeted communities of Geidam and Kanamma, and disrupted markets and farming, Aminu Musa, a trader, told the Associated Press.

Police spokesman Chris Olakpe told AP Saturday, January 3, that police and soldiers had brought the remote northeast region under control, without giving further details.

Since 1999 when Nigeria emerged from military rule, 12 states in the mainly Muslim north have reintroduced Sharia into their penal codes for the first time since independence from Britain.

The reintroduction of Sharia has also heightened tensions between Nigeria's Muslim and Christian populations, who each make up around half of the country's population of 126 million.