DAMATURU: Gunmen killed at least 26 people on Sunday in an attack on a college in northeast Nigeria, a hospital source said, in a region where Islamist militants have targeted schools and universities.
Islamist sect Boko Haram has intensified attacks on civilian targets in recent weeks in reaction to a military offensive against its insurgency.
Gunmen stormed the College of Agriculture in Yobe state and shot students as they slept in the early hours of Sunday, state police commissioner Sanusi Rufai said. A hospital source in the
Yobe state capital Damaturu, who asked not to be named, said 26 bodies had been brought in from the scene of the attack.
Suspected Boko Haram militants have targeted several schools in recent months, including a raid which killed 27 students and a teacher at a school in Potiskum, a town about 30 miles (50km) from the site of Sunday’s attack.
Thousands have been killed since Boko Haram launched its uprising against the state in 2009, turning itself from a clerical movement opposed to Western culture into an armed militia with growing links to al Qaeda’s West African wing.
Boko Haram and spin-off Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-linked Ansaru have become the biggest security threat in Africa’s second largest economy and top oil exporter. Reuters
