Lagos — Muslim authorities in northern Nigerian have carried out a sentence of 100 lashes on a teenage mother convicted of having premarital sex, officials said Monday.

Human-rights groups, which campaigned against the conviction of 17-year-old Bariya Magazu by an Islamic sharia court, expressed rage at the flogging.

An official from the northwestern Zamfara state told Reuters by telephone that Ms. Magazu was caned in the premises of the sharia court in the state capital on Friday.

"The sentence on Magazu was carried out last weekend in accordance with the judgment of the sharia court," the official said.

Zamfara state deputy governor Mamuda Aliyu Dallatun Shinkafi said on state radio that the girl "was able to walk home" after the flogging.

Mr. Shinkafi said: "She is no longer disgraced. She has had her honour back" because a man in her village has proposed to her.

Ms. Magazu, whose baby was born in December, was sentenced to 100 lashes last September for having premarital sex and an additional 80 strokes for what the court said were false claims against three men whom she accused of forcing her to have sex with them.

The sentence was later reduced to 100 strokes, but the verdict still drew condemnation from inside and outside Nigeria.

"We are shocked and surprised that the sentence has been carried out in a such a rushed and cruel manner," said Aisha Imam, whose Baobab pressure group led the campaign against the sentence.

Ms. Imam said the sentence was carried out even as her organization's lawyers were in court for an appeal. "We are pressing ahead with the appeal and if we are lucky, we may get financial compensation for her," she said.

A senior court official said he had no knowledge of any appeal against the sentence.

In 1999, Zamfara blazed the trail for northern Nigerian states by adopting Islam's strict sharia legal system, opposed by many non-Muslims because of its severity, as in its provision for the death of convicted adulterers and amputation of a hand for theft.

The declaration of sharia in some northern states led to Christian-Muslim fighting in March and May last year in the northern city of Kaduna in which hundreds of people died.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian who took office in May, 1999, has in the past condemned the application of sharia, but it is difficult politically for him to move strongly against it because of its popular appeal in the north.