MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram killed four people in an attack on a
Sunday church service in the northeast town of Maiduguri, police said on Monday, adding to the death toll from a separate
shooting in the country’s second largest city Kano.
Gunmen killed at least 15 people and wounded
many more at a Christian service in Kano on Sunday, the latest round of violence which has seen hundreds killed in the
mostly-Muslim north of Nigeria this year.
No group took responsibility for either attack and it was not clear if they
were coordinated. But both strikes bore the hallmarks of the Boko Haram sect, which has used bomb and gun attacks in its push
to carve out an Islamic state in Africa’s most populous nation.
“Boko Haram who were six in number came in a
Volkswagen Golf car and shot the pastor and three others while they were about to administer the Holy Communion to
worshippers,” Maiduguri police spokesman Samuel Tizhe said.
Maiduguri is the capital of northeast Borno state, Boko
Haram’s home region and the location of the majority of its attacks, which mostly target the police and military but have
also hit churches and drinking spots.
In the attack in Kano on Sunday, gunmen arrived on motorbikes at a university
lecture theatre used for Christian services and threw small home made bombs into the building before shooting fleeing
worshippers. nL5E8FT05E
“President Goodluck Jonathan condemns the murderous terrorist attack on the Bayero University
Campus in Kano yesterday and the brutal killing of innocent worshippers at the University by vicious assailants,” a
presidency statement said.
Jonathan has been criticised by Nigerians and foreign diplomats for failing to get a grip
on the sect’s wave of violence, which has gained momentum since his presidential election victory a year ago.
Most of
Boko Haram’s attacks focus on authority figures it believes have wronged the group by arresting or killing its
members.
Nigeria’s more than 160 million population is split roughly equally between a largely Christian south and a
mostly Muslim north.
