Zimpapers Logo

KANO. — More than 150 people, including 38 police, died in a Boko Haram raid on the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu this week, police, a rescue official and a health worker told AFP yesterday.

A senior rescue official and a medical source at the city’s Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital said 115 bodies were brought to the morgue after Monday’s attack, although it was not clear whether they were insurgents or civilians.

All 115 were in civilian clothing, but it was not certain whether they were all non-combatants, the sources said.

Among the dead were two medical doctors, a staff member of the federal polytechnic in the Yobe state capital, and his two children.

Six soldiers were also killed, the sources added.

Emmanuel Ojukwu, spokesperson for Nigeria’s federal police, said: “Out of the police, we have 38 deaths.”

Most of the police killed were at the mobile police base in the Gujba Road area of the city, Ojukwu said, confirming eyewitness testimony from residents that the facility was attacked.

The heavy loss of life came after an increase in mass casualty attacks blamed on the militants, who have been fighting since 2009 to establish a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.

Also on Monday, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a market in the Borno state capital, Maidiguri — less than a week after two other women killed more than 45 at the same location. — AFP.