MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Gunmen suspected to belong to a radical Islamist sect attacked a bakery and shot others in the streets of a northeast Nigeria city, killing at least seven people, police said Thursday.
The attack again saw gunmen open fire in the city of Maiduguri, where the sect known as Boko Haram once had its main mosque.
The gunfire began late Wednesday, when suspected sect gunmen opened fire and shot dead an officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, Borno state police spokesman Samuel Tizhe said. The gunmen also killed a man selling drinking water in the street, Tizhe said.
Gunmen later opened fire at a bakery where workers had been working overnight in preparation for sales Thursday morning, Tizhe said, killing five people.
This is just the latest violence in the area blamed on Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the Hausa language of Nigeria’s north. The sect is blamed for killing more than 440 people this year alone in Nigeria, according to an Associated Press count.
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