Boko Haram kills 36 Igbo, others in Mubi, Maiduguri

SUSPECTED members of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram made well its threat by killing 36 Igbo people in the North, three days after expiration of its ultimatum to southerners to leave the region.

SUSPECTED members of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, made well its threat by killing 36 Igbo people in the North, three days after the expiration of its ultimatum to southerners to leave the region.

The Moment On Saturday gathered that 30 of the people were killed yesterday in separate attacks in Mubi, Adamawa State and Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, by assailants suspected to be members of the Boko Haram.

While the Boko Haram members killed at least 20 people in Mubi, where they were attending a town hall meeting, the other 10 were killed in Maiduguri.

In a similar attack, six Christian worshippers were shot dead while 14 others were critically injured yesterday when the assailants stormed Deeper Life Church, Bogo, opposite Nasarawu junction in Gombe State in the night.

The Moment On Saturday gathered that at about noon yesterday, armed men, numbering over 10, opened fire at a town hall in Mubi, a town near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon.

Adamawa State Police Commissioner, Ade Shinaba, who confirmed the figure in the Mubi attack, said the it was targeted at a hall where Igbo people were holding a town’s meeting.

Shinaba told the media that the armed Boko Haram members were suspected to be responsible for the killings, although the group has not yet claimed responsibility.

Okey Raymond, 48, who was at the town hall at the time of the attack, recounted that assailed southerners started hearing gunshots through the windows and this made them scamper for safety, but the gunmen chanted: ‘God is great God is great’ while shooting at them.

Raymond said he hid under a table and escaped through a back door.

Residents of Mubi told newsmen the attacks occurred at a meeting to discuss the deaths of four others from the Igbo community who were killed in the town on Wednesday.

An eye witness further buttressed Raymond’s story.‘The first attack took place last night when four people were killed, and as people gathered this morning to discuss the matter and deliberate, gunmen suddenly appeared on the scene and started shooting and another 10 to 12 people were killed there,’ he told our correspondent on Friday.

The Mubi attack in Adamawa followed the killing of six people who were shot at a church in Gombe, on Thursday.

Ahmed Mohammad, the state police spokesman, confirmed in Gombe city on Friday that six people were killed and eight others wounded in the shootings at the Deeper Life Christian Ministry Church.

The church pastor, John Jauro, said confusion broke out when the assailants opened fire and that his wife was among the dead.

A Red Cross official confirmed the incident but gave no details on the number of dead.
The residents said 10 who were killed at the hall in Mubi were mostly from the Igbo ethnic group, who are Christians and a minority in the mainly Muslim Northeast.

Earlier in the week, most local newspapers published the warning from Boko Haram that Christians had three days to leave the Muslim areas in northern Nigeria or they would be eliminated.

The militant group also claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks across Nigeria on Christmas Day, including one at a church near the capital Abuja that killed at least 50 people and wounded 57.