Nigerian Islamists shot dead a seven-year-old girl during a failed attempt to kill her policeman father hours after group members killed three people in a separate raid, the army and police said Monday. The latest violence blamed on Boko Haram Islamists comes after a blast near a church killed 20 on Easter Sunday, an attack reportedly carried out by a suicide bomber driving an explosives-packed vehicle.
Late Sunday, suspected Boko Haram gunmen opened fire into the house of a police sergeant in the northeastern town of Potiskum, a police spokesman in Yobe State, Toyin Gbadigisin, told AFP. “They fired shots at him while sitting in the midst of his family. He managed to avoid the bullets and scaled over the fence,” Gbadigisin said. “The gunmen shot dead his seven-year-old-daughter and seriously injured another 12-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old-son who are now in hospital.” In a separate attack in the northeastern town of Dikwa around 1:30 am (0030 GMT) on Monday, Boko Haram gunmen killed a policeman, a civilian and a local politician in coordinated attacks, the army said in a text message sent to AFP.
The attackers targeted a police station, a bank and a hotel but were quickly repelled by army troops, according to Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, spokesman of the military’s Joint Task Force (JTF) in Borno State. “Three Boko Haram terrorists were killed and many escaped with bullet wounds,” Musa said, adding that “normalcy has been restored and the situation is now under control.” In a wave of recent attacks that Nigeria has struggled to contain, Boko Haram has targeted the security services, other symbols of authority and Christians.
Early on Sunday with Easter services ongoing in the northern town of Kaduna, a bomber, apparently blocked from accessing the grounds of a church, blew up his explosives-packed car on a nearby road, rescue workers told AFP. Twenty people were killed and 30 others injured, with motorcycle taxi drivers appearing to have borne the brunt of the blast. The Nigerian authorities as well as foreign embassies had warned of the possibility of an attack on Easter Sunday. The attack in the important cultural and economic centre was a stark reminder of Christmas Day attacks that left dozens of people dead in Africa’s most populous nation and largest oil producer. Late Sunday, another bomb blast rocked an area of the central Nigerian city of Jos, with an emergency spokesman reporting a number of injuries.
