KANO, Oct 18: Troops were deployed in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna on Monday, where tension has risen since police secretly buried 11 bodies in a local cemetery, witnesses and officials said.

Kaduna State spokesman Muktar Sirajo said the security forces had been deployed "to forestall a break of law and order following claims that the police buried 11 bodies in two graves this morning".

The police had said the corpses dumped in the Tudunwada cemetery were those of "bandits" killed legitimately in clashes with officers, the spokesman said.

But residents said many in Kaduna suspected the bodies could be those of demonstrators, 40 of whom were arrested in Tudunwada during protests associated with a nationwide general strike over fuel prices.

A local radio journalist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, told AFP that before the security forces sealed off the cemetery he had seen two fresh grave sites surrounded by blood stains.

The governor of Kaduna made a radio broadcast appealing for calm and promised a six-member commission of inquiry would be set up to identify the corpses and find an explanation for what had happened.

"The police claim the people they killed were bandits. It's up to the committee to determine whether those killed were bandits or not," Sirajo said.

Witnesses said that hundreds of heavily-armed police and soldiers were patrolling the town centre and had sealed off both the cemetery and roads leading to it.

"There was a claim by youths in the area this morning that policemen came to the cemetery at dawn and dug two graves in which they buried 11 bodies," the local reporter told AFP by telephone.

"The youth in the area mobilised and planned to exhume the bodies to determine their identities, considering the fact that 40 protesters were arrested during last week's picketing," he said.

"While they were about to go into the cemetery, hundreds of soldiers and policemen were drafted to the scene and cordoned off the cemetery," he said. Sirajo said that the bodies had later been exhumed.

On October 11, on the first day of a national strike over rising fuel prices, police in Kaduna clashed with protesters who attempted to block a road with a burning barricade.

Police later confirmed that one protester, 12-year-old Sani Hamisu, had been shot dead during the confrontation and that 40 more had been arrested.

During the five years since Nigeria's return to civilian rule, Kaduna has often erupted into bloody street violence in which thousands have died. Nigeria's police often resort to firing with live ammunition during disturbances.

On October 15 two demonstrators were killed and three injured when a policeman protecting government offices in the northern city of Gusau fired into a crowd which had gathered to seek gifts for Ramazan, a state spokesman said.

Last year the force confirmed its officers had shot dead more than 3,000 suspects, although rights groups believe that even this figure is an underestimate and that many unarmed citizens have been needlessly slain.-AFP