Nairobi/Lagos  - The leader of an Islamic sect involved in bloody unrest in northern Nigeria has been killed while in police custody, news reports said.

Mohammed Yusuf was shot while trying to escape after his arrest in the town of Maiduguri, Nigerian authorities said late Thursday, the BBC reported.

"Mohammed Yusuf was killed by security forces in a shootout while trying to escape," a police spokesman told Nigerian television.

According to the This Day newspaper, Yusuf's deputy has also been detained.

Bloody battles have raged across northern Nigeria since Sunday morning when Boko Haram, a group sometimes called the Nigerian Taliban, launched a series of attacks on police stations.

The army on Thursday shelled Yusuf's compound, reducing most of it to rubble, and then stormed the mosque.

Blood-stained bodies of young men, many of them clad in white robes, littered the streets of the town after the battle. Witnesses spoke of as many as 200 people killed.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with around 150 million inhabitants, is split between the Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.

Boko Haram, which was formed in 2002, wants to impose sharia, or Islamic law, across the whole of Nigeria and is also opposed to Western education.

President Umaru Yar'Adua, who is himself a Muslim from the north, authorized the army to take whatever action was necessary to restore order. (dpa)