Gunmen attack villages, church near Chibok, 15 dead

Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 15 people on Sunday in an attack on two Nigerian villages, including one targeting worshipers at a church, a few kilometres (three miles) from Chibok, the scene of a mass abduction of more than 200 school girls.

Violence in Nigeria’s northeast has been relentless in the past year, and has gained in intensity since April, when more than 200 schoolgirls were snatched by Boko Haram rebels from Chibok. Efforts to free them, which have attracted Western support, have so far not succeeded.

In a separate assault on Friday evening, insurgents killed seven soldiers in the village of Goniri, in Yobe state, a security source and witnesses said.

The attackers on Sunday made simultaneous strikes on two villages in the Chibok community, in Borno state.

Samuel Chibok, a survivor of the attack on Kautikiri village, about five km from where the girls were snatched, said that around 20 men in a Toyota pick-up truck and motorcycles rolled into town. They sprayed it with bullets, focusing much of their fire power on panicked worshippers in a local church. “Initially I thought they were military but when I came out, they were firing at people. I saw people fleeing and they burned our houses,” he said, adding that some people had died in the attack, including two of his relatives. “Smoke was billowing from our town as I left.”

A local pro-government vigilante, who declined to be named, said residents had now recovered 15 bodies from the village.

Boko Haram often attacks institutions it sees as against its strict version of Sunni Islam, including churches, bars and non-religious schools that teach Western ideas like science.

Another attack on Kwada, eight km (five miles) from Chibok village, left some people dead, a security source operating in the area said, although the toll was not yet clear.