Nigeria mosque attacks kill 56
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Suspected Islamic militants wearing army fatigues gunned down 44 people praying at a mosque in northeast Nigeria while another 12 civilians died in an apparently simultaneous attack, security agents said Monday.
Sunday’s attacks were the latest in a slew of violence blamed on religious extremists in this West African oil producer, where the radical Boko Haram group, which wants to oust the government and impose Islamic law, poses the greatest security threat in years.
It was not immediately clear why the Islamic Boko Haram would have killed worshipping Muslims, but the group has in the past attacked mosques whose clerics have spoken out against religious extremism. Boko Haram also has attacked Christians outside churches and teachers and schoolchildren as well as government and military targets.
Since 2010, the militants have been blamed for the killings of more than 1,700 people, according to a count conducted by the Associated Press.
The news about Sunday’s violence in Borno state, one of three in the northeast under a military state of emergency, came as journalists received a video featuring Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who gloats over recent attacks, threatens more and even says his group is now strong enough to go after the United States.
The mosque slayings occurred Sunday morning in Konduga, 22 miles outside Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno state.
A state security service agent and Usman Musa, a member of a civilian militia that works with the military, said Monday they counted the bodies at the mosque after the attack. Musa said four members of his group – known as the Civilian Joint Task Force – also were killed when they reached Konduga and encountered “fierce resistance from heavily armed terrorists.”
Musa and the security service agent said the attackers wore military camouflage uniforms used by the Nigerian army, which they may have acquired in one of their attacks on military bases.
On their way back from Konduga, the security forces came upon the scene of another attack at Ngom, 3 miles outside Maiduguri, where Musa said he counted 12 bodies of civilians.
Twenty-six worshippers at the mosque were hospitalized with gunshot wounds, said a security guard at the emergency ward of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. He and the state security agent both spoke on condition of anonymity.