Soldiers search house-to-house for
attackers who killed 25 people in
college housing area in Adamawa
state.
Nigeria'n troops moved house to
house in the northeastern town of
Mubi in a bid to find attackers
responsible for killing 25 people in a
college student housing area.
The search on Wednesday followed
a dusk-to-dawn curfew that was
imposed after assailants in the West
African nation shot dead or slit the
throats of students in their
accommodations outside the campus
of the Federal Polytechnic Mubi
college. The attack occurred between
10pm on Monday and 3am on
Tuesday.
"The military is going house to house
searching," said Abubakar Ahmed,
head of the Red Cross in Adamawa
state.
Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria's
president, called the massacre "sad
and shocking" while directing security
agencies to find the perpetrators, his
spokesman said.
"The president described the incident
as tragic, sad and shocking," Reuben
Abati told reporters on Wednesday,
"He has directed security agencies to
investigate the matter and get to the
root because this kind of incident
where people are called out and shot
is really shocking."
Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ngege, reporting
from the capital Abuja, said that
Nigerian police had cordoned off the
area in which the students were killed,
including the college.
Yushau Shuaib, a National Emergency
Management Agency spokesperson,
said it was not clear whether the
attack was the work of Boko Haram, a
group blamed for previous deadly
assaults, or the result of a dispute
between rival political groups at the
university.
Officials also pointed out that the
attack could be related to a students'
election that was recently held at the
school. Shuaib said initial reports
indicated one of the victims was a
candidate in the poll.
"The killers went from room to room,
slaughtering them one by one," said
witness Mohammed Awal, who was
not harmed in the attack.
Some were shot, others killed with
machetes, he said.
'Disputed election'
Police were investigating whether the
killings might have been motivated by
a political feud inside the college, the
Reuters news agency reported.
Al Jazeera's correspondent also said
that emergency services believed this
attack was related to a disputed
election at the campus.
"What we do know, speaking to the
police and emergency services, is that
these students were attacked in the
dead of night. Many of them were fast
asleep when these gunmen stormed
their dormitory," Ndege said.
"The emergency services are saying
that sometime ago there was some
kind of a disputed election at
campus ... and it's believed that this
could have been some kind of a
premeditated attack by those involved
with the polytechnic."
"'The reason they say this is because
names, individual names, were
actually called out by the gunmen
before the students were attacked."
Adamawa state police spokesman
Ibrahim Muhammad said 25 men
were killed: 19 students of Federal
Polytechnic Mubi, three students of
another college, an ex-soldier, a
security guard and an elderly man.
He said the student halls had been
raided by police last week as part of a
crackdown against Boko Haram.
Boko Haram rule out
During the raid, police recovered
weapons including a rocket propelled
grenade, dozens of homemade
bombs, knives and automatic assault
rifles.
"Boko Haram [attackers] open fire
sporadically," said Muhammad.
"In this case, the attackers called their
victims by name and left other people
in the room alone. This is not the
modus operandi of Boko Haram."
"It is the work of insiders,"
Muhammad said.
The college attack follows the killing
on Saturday of three students outside
a university campus, about 170km
away, in the city of Maiduguri.
Ahmed Mohammed, a spokesman for
the University of Maiduguri, said on
Monday that the university was aware
of the attack but that he could not
comment since it occurred off school
premises.
Adamawa state, where Mubi
is situated, has a mixed Muslim and
Christian population and borders
Borno state, where Boko Haram came
to prominence in 2009, staging an
uprising in the state capital,
Maiduguri.
Source- Aljazeera
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