KANO, Jan 6: Nigerian troops and border guards from neighbouring Niger have killed or captured more than 50 Islamic radicals who launched a Taliban-style revolt, officials said on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the Yobe State government said that 47 rebels had been detained since Friday and that five had been killed, along with three women and two children caught up in a raid on their border hideout.

Seven of those arrested were picked up by gendarme from neighbouring Niger, acting as guards on its porous frontier with the Nigeria's remote and arid northern savannah, junior spokesman Alkali Jajere said.

The Muhajirun group, which openly claims inspiration from Taliban, was thought to count around 200 members, mainly middle-class graduates from the northeastern city of Maiduguri.

The group has launched a series of attacks in the past three weeks on police stations in the northern state of Yobe and along Nigeria's northern border with Niger, killing at least two officers.

Many of the radicals are thought to have melted away into the population, but their leader - nicknamed 'Mullah Omar' - has been arrested, Jajere said. "Security forces are still looking for other members of the group, who have disappeared or melted into the community. We know this will be difficult,"Jajere said.

Army spokesman Chukwuemeka Onwuamaegbu said Yobe's governor, Bukar Abba Ibrahim, had appealed to President Olusegun Obasanjo to send in troops "to assist the police to curb the violent activities of the bandits."-AFP