MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- Boko Haram extremists gunned down nearly 100 Muslims who were praying in mosques in a northeast Nigerian town in observance of the holy month of Ramadan, a government official and a self-defense-force fighter said Thursday.
The attack Wednesday night on the town of Kukawa came the day after the Islamic extremist group attacked a village 22 miles away and killed another 48 men and boys, according to witnesses who counted the dead.
The people of Kukawa were in several mosques, praying ahead of breaking their day-long Ramadan fast, when the extremists attacked. They killed 97 people, mainly men, according to self-defense-force spokesman Abbas Gava and a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give information to reporters.
Gava said his group's fighters in Kukawa said some militants also broke into people's homes, killing women and children as they prepared the evening meal.
Kukawa is 110 miles northeast of Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeast Nigeria and the birthplace of Boko Haram.
The extremist group often defiles mosques where it believes clerics espouse too moderate a form of Islam.
Wednesday's attack followed a directive from the Islamic State extremist group for fighters to increase attacks during Ramadan. Boko Haram this year became the Islamic State group's West African ally.
On Tuesday night, the extremists invaded the village of Mussaram, ordered men and women to separate and then opened fire on the men and boys, witnesses said.
On Monday, two suicide bombers blew themselves up prematurely in a village outside Maiduguri an hour before the arrival of Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo. He visited some of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the 5-year-old Islamic uprising that has killed more than 13,000 people.
A Section on 07/03/2015