97 Killed In Mosque By Boko Haram In The North-East

Boko Haram extremists gunned down nearly 100 Muslims praying in
mosques in a northeast Nigerian town during the holy month of Ramadan,
a government official and a self-defence fighter said Thursday.

The attack Wednesday night on the town of Kukawa came the day after
the Islamic extremist group attacked a village 35 kilometres (22
miles) away and killed another 48 men and boys, according to witnesses
who counted the dead.

The people of Kukawa were in several mosques, praying ahead of
breaking their daylong fast, when the extremists attacked. They killed
97 people, mainly men, said self-defence spokesman Abbas Gava and a
senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because
he is not authorized to give information to reporters.

Gava said his group's fighters in Kukawa said some militants also
broke into people's homes, killing women and children as they prepared
the evening meal.

Kukawa is 180 kilometres (110 miles) northeast of Maiduguri, the
biggest city in northeast Nigeria and the birthplace of Boko Haram.

Nigeria's homegrown extremist group often defiles mosques where it
believes clerics espouse too moderate a form of Islam. Wednesday's
attack follows a directive from the Islamic State group for fighters
to increase attacks during Ramadan. Boko Haram this year became the IS
group's West African franchise.

On Tuesday night, the extremists invaded the village of Mussaram,
ordered men and women to separate and then opened fire on the men and
boys, witnesses said.

"A total of 48 males died on the spot while 17 others escaped with
serious injuries," said Maidugu Bida, a self-defence official? based
in nearby Monguno who helped bury the dead.

On Monday, two suicide bombers blew themselves up prematurely in a
village outside Maiduguri just an hour before the arrival of Nigeria's
Vice-President Yemi Osinbanjo. He visited some of the hundreds of
thousands of people displaced by the 5-year-old Islamic uprising that
has killed more than 13,000 people and driven 1.5 million from their
homes.

Some of those killed in attacks in the past month had only just
returned to rebuild towns and villages recaptured this year from Boko
Haram by a multinational army.

—