Dozens Killed as the Nigerian Army Raids Shia Sect Inspired by the Iranian Revolution

Nigerian armed forces clashed with the West African country's most prominent Shiite Muslim sect over the weekend, killing upwards of 60 people and arresting the head of the group, who models himself after another well-known global Shiite leader — the late Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

The raid on the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) took place in the northern city of Zaria, with the army claiming the leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, was trying to assassinate the chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai. Authorities reportedly took Zakzaky and his wife into custody, while some reports indicated his son died in the attack, according to the BBC.

Members of the sect had blocked the lieutenant general's convoy in the city on Saturday. The group had been conducting an annual ritual to usher in the month of Maulud, the birth month of the Prophet Mohammed.

Following the convoy incident, the army raided several buildings on Sunday connected to the sect and the home of Zakzaky. They arrested him and killed key members of the group, including Zakzaky's second-in-command and spokesman.

"As of yesterday, we had 60 corpses in our morgue," Khalid Lawal, the chief medical director of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, told Reuters.

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Residents said they heard loud blasts during the raid and journalists were barred entry to the cordoned-off area.

Most of Nigeria's tens of millions of Muslims are Sunni, including the home-grown Boko Haram Islamist militant group that has killed thousands in bombings and shootings since 2009, largely in northeastern Nigeria,.

But there are also several thousand Shiites, mostly followers of Zakzaky, whose movement was inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Khomeini in majority-Shiite Iran. The group has aims to establish an Islamic Republic in the Kaduna state, located north of the capital Abuja.

Iran condemned the attack on Monday and summoned Nigeria's representative there, according to its state news agency. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on the Nigerian government to take "prompt and serious" action.

The Shiite sect claimed that hundreds of their members were killed. The army took most of the bodies away, making it impossible to verify the claim. Spokesmen for Nigeria's presidency and the army both declined to comment, according to Reuters.

A similar altercation between the sect and the army occurred last year during a pilgrim procession. Zakzaky said that 30 followers and three of his sons were killed. At the end of November, more than 20 IMN members died in a bombing attack carried out during a pilgrimage. Some claim Boko Haram was behind the violence, while Zakzaky has refuted this allegation.

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