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LAGOS - Hundreds of people have fled a village in northern Nigeria fearing reprisals after seven policemen were killed, residents and police said on Monday.

Police said they deployed a unit to the Danja district in northwest Katsina state, after locals razed a police post and killed seven officers on Friday.

Three villagers were also killed in a fight sparked by an argument between a police officer and a cart-pusher at a local market, police said.

Seven others were in hospital with serious injuries, police said.

"The place has been virtually deserted," the resident said by phone from Katsina, the state capital. "The villagers are afraid that the police may move in to avenge the killing of their colleagues."

Katsina state police spokesman Salisu Sirajo said police had no intention of attacking innocent villagers.

"The riot policemen deployed to the area are not on any reprisal mission," Sirajo said. "They were deployed there because if we do not beef up security in the area, anything can happen."

He said the attack in Danja was the third of its kind and about 30 people were arrested in connection with the incident.

The army massacred hundreds in an apparent revenge attack in central Benue State in October after a local militia killed 19 soldiers.

Troops also killed dozens of people and levelled the town of Odi in southwest Bayelsa State in November 1999 after a local militia killed 12 policemen.

Africa's most populous nation of more than 110 million people is facing its worst cycle of violence since the end of the late 1960s, when civil war erupted over breakaway Biafra. Nampa-Reuters