Radical Islamist group kills 3 hospital employees in fresh Nigeria attack
Published 30 December 2010
A radical Islamist sect which has claimed responsibility for Christmas Eve bombings of Nigerian churches is behind the killing of three more people at a hospital, police said on Wednesday; the Boko Haram group -- the name means "Western education is sinful" in the Hausa language spoken across northern Nigeria -- is loosely modeled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan; it demands the introduction of Islamic law across Nigeria
Boko Haram militants killed in assault on police station // Source: novinite.com
A radical Islamist sect which has claimed responsibility for Christmas Eve bombings of Nigerian churches is believed to be behind the killing of three more people at a hospital, police said on Wednesday.
The three victims, including a senior police officer, were killed on Tuesday when men fired shots in a teaching hospital in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and one of two cities where churches were bombed on Friday.
“An investigation has already commenced but I can tell you that we believe the killings must have been carried out by the Boko Haram since it was their mode of operations,” the Borno state police public relations officer said.
Reuters reports that Boko Haram said on its Web site on Tuesday it was behind the Christmas Eve bombings of churches in Maiduguri and the central city of Jos.
The group, whose name means “Western education is sinful” in the Hausa language spoken across northern Nigeria, is loosely modeled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. It demands the introduction of Islamic law across Nigeria.
Police said at least eighty people were killed in the Jos bombings and subsequent clashes between Muslim and Christian youths there. Six people died in the Maiduguri bombings.
Maiduguri sits in one of Nigeria’s poorest regions near its northeastern borders with Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 150 million people, is roughly equally divided between Christians and Muslims. Boko Haram’s views are not espoused by most Nigerian Muslims.
Nigeria is preparing for a fiercely contested presidential election in April and can ill-afford an insecurity crisis.
It was shaken by car bomb attacks in the capital Abuja in October, claimed by a rebel group in the oil-producing Niger Delta, a region where violence has also flared up in the last month.
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