MAIDUGURI, Nigeria // Nine people were killed when gunmen opened fire on a church service in the village of Attangara, taking the death toll from violence in Nigeria’s north-east on Sunday to 24.
The village is in the Gwoza hills, near the Cameroon border.
“As we were holding service, we started hearing gunshots and everybody fled, some through the windows, and ran into the bush,” said Matha Yohana, a resident, of Sunday’s attack. A police source said nine were killed in the assault.
“More than 10 of them were riding motorcycles and one car,” Ms Yohana said. Local vigilantes had pursued the attackers, killing four of them and detaining three, she said.
Nigeria’s military said on Monday it had arrested a suspect it believes was behind a bomb attack that killed 18 people watching football on television in the north-east the previous day.
There blast also wounded 19 people in Kabang town in Adamawa state.
“A key suspect in the terror bomb explosion that rocked Kabang Community in Mubi, Adamawa State ... has been arrested by troops who cordoned area in swift response to the explosion,” said defence spokesman Brigadier General Chris Olukolade in the capital, Abuja.
There were no claims of responsibility for the attacks, but the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The group whose violent struggle for an Islamic state in religiously-mixed Nigeria has killed thousands in the past five years, has set off several bombs across north and central Nigeria since April.
It is still holding more than 219 girls abducted from a secondary school on April 14.
* Reuters
