MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Gunmen from radical Islamist sect Boko Haram have killed at least
seven civilians in the past 24 hours in a spate of attacks in northern Nigeria, police said on Thursday.
Boko Haram,
which wants to carve an Islamic state out of Africa’s most populous nation split evenly between Muslims and Christians, has
killed hundreds in almost daily gun and bomb attacks this year.
“A water vendor and a customs officer were killed in
Abbaganaram and Kasuwan custom areas on Wednesday in the evening, while 5 bakers were killed at the Kasmi Bakery on
Thursday,” Samuel Tizhe, spokesman for police in the sect’s northeastern heartland of Maiduguri, said.
A military
offensive against Boko Haram seems to have weakened the sect in the past few weeks, making it less capable of carrying out
high-profile attacks with large casualty tolls, but it remains a major security headache for President Goodluck Jonathan’s
administration.
A bomb near a church in northern city Kaduna on Easter Sunday killed more than 30 people.
This
week, the U.S. embassy in Nigeria warned its citizens that the group might be planning attacks on the capital Abuja, which
Nigerian authorities quickly dismissed as alarmist.
The group has struck the capital a few times, but its attacks are
mostly concentrated in the largely Muslim north.
