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Northeast Nigeria militant attacks kill at least 65

05 November 2011 17:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. At least 65 people were killed in a spate of coordinated gun and bomb attacks in the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu on Friday, an aid agency said, and witnesses said dozens of bodies were piling up in morgues in the now almost deserted city, APa reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.

Gunmen raided the city and nearby village of Potiskum, both in northeastern Yobe state, on Friday evening, and engaged in several hours of running gunbattles with security forces, witnesses said.

Militants bombed churches, mosques and police stations.

Though no one has claimed responsibility, the Boko Haram Islamist sect has been behind previous such attacks.

"This place was like a war zone last night. There is no single policeman on the street now, the attacks destroyed mosques and churches, I have seen many injured persons in the hospital," said local Damaturu artisan Benard Ogbeifun.

"There were dozens of dead bodies, and no vehicles on the road. I’m staying in my shop and praying."

An internal memo sent to Reuters from an emergency relief agency, which declined to be named and did not say who was responsible for the killings, counted 65 people killed in total. All were in Damaturu, except for two in Patiskum.

"The police headquarters, (military) Joint Task Force Office and five Churches were attacked with explosives ... and there was also an exchange of gunfire between the Security operatives and the unknown gunmen in Damaturu, the state capital," the report said.

Some 16 other people were wounded by gunshots at the two locations, all but three of them hospitalized, it said. It described the situation in the city on Saturday as "relatively calm."

Seven police officers and two soldiers were among the dead in Damaturu, said a military source said.

MULTIPLE SUICIDE BOMBINGS

The attacks followed multiple bomb blasts in nearby Maiduguri, making Friday one of the worst days of violence in the northeast since Islamist sect Boko Haram launched an insurgency against Nigerian authorities in 2009, vowing to impose sharia law across the country.

A triple suicide bombing of military headquarters in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria’s biggest city, and three roadside bombs in different parts of it, wounded at least seven people. The blasts all went off shortly after Friday prayers.

The sect has overtaken militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta as the West African country’s main security headache.

Another witness to the Damaturu violence, Umar Gambo, said he had seen several dozen dead bodies at the local morgue.

"The streets are deserted. I have lost count of dead bodies, but ... I saw at least 80 dead bodies in the mortuary. There is no high presence of security on the streets and two banks were bombed," he said.

"I can’t understand why all this madness."

Boko Haram says it wants sharia law more widely imposed across Nigeria. It draws much of its support from unemployed youth in the remote, economically deprived north.

The group appears to be growing in sophistication and security analysts believe it has made links with al Qaeda’s north African affiliate.

A suicide car bomb attack against the United Nations’ Nigeria headquarters in Abuja killed 26 people.