Voters brave death threats

DAMATURU (AP):

Few voters straggled to polls yesterday to elect local councils in a northeastern Nigerian state battling Islamic militants who say democracy in corruption-riddled Nigeria is an enemy of the people.

Heavily armed police, intelligence agents and the civil service defence corps guarded polling stations and manned roadblocks in Yobe state, which suffered some of the most brutal attacks on schools by extremists this year.

Islamic extremist leader Abubakar Shekau threatened more mayhem in a video that reached The Associated Press yesterday.

"As for killing, we will kill because Allah says we should decapitate, we should amputate limbs, we should mutilate," Shekau says in the video that was distributed through the same channels the group has used previously, though its authenticity could not be independently verified.