{{Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed more than 100 people in an attack on a village in Nigeria, a local senator said on Sunday.}}<\/p>\n
The attackers stormed the village in Nigeria’s restive north-eastern Borno state on Saturday, slaughtering scores of civilians and sending many others fleeing.<\/p>\n
“A hundred and six people, including an old woman, have been killed by the attackers, suspected to be Boko Haram gunmen,” senator Ali Ndume told media.<\/p>\n
“Sixty of the dead have been buried while the rest are awaiting burial,” he said, adding the attacks in the area were becoming “deadlier and more frequent by the day.”<\/p>\n
The raid took place on Saturday in the mostly Christian village of Izghe in Borno, which has been under emergency rule since May 2013 in a bid to stop an Islamist rebellion that has claimed thousands of lives since 2009.<\/p>\n
A local farmer who escaped by scaling the fence of his house and crawling on his belly for 40 minutes said the attackers had gone door-to-door looking for those hiding in their houses.<\/p>\n
“The attackers came around 9:30 pm (20.30 GMT) in six trucks and some motorcycles.<\/p>\n
They were dressed in military uniform,” Barnabas Idi said.<\/p>\n
“They asked men to assemble at a place, and began hacking and slaughtering them.”<\/p>\n
There were no security forces in the town at the time of the attack, he said.<\/p>\n
The head of the local government in the area, Maina Ularamu, earlier told reporters: “From the latest information I have gathered, more than 60 people have been killed.”<\/p>\n
“We suspect that the gunmen were members of Boko Haram. They have taken over the village,” said Ularamu.<\/p>\n
“They looted businesses and food stores and loaded all their spoils into vehicles owned by residents and fled into the bush,” he added.<\/p>\n
The official was speaking from Abuja and said he was preparing to return to Maiduguri, the state capital, to deal with the fallout of the attack.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of villagers in Borno had already fled to Maiduguri after Boko Haram militants last week killed 43 people in two separate attacks.<\/p>\n
The militant sect has said it is fighting to create a strict Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.<\/p>\n
The southern half of the oil-rich country, Africa’s most populous, is mainly Christian.<\/p>\n
Gunmen also attacked a fishing village on Lake Chad on Saturday, killing an unspecified number of residents.<\/p>\n
A survivor said several people had drowned in the lake while trying to escape the gunmen.<\/p>\n
Military spokesman Mohammed Dole confirmed the attack but declined to comment further saying the area fell under the jurisdiction of a multinational task force comprising troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad.<\/p>\n
Boko Haram militants have carried out frequent attacks in both cities and remote areas of the northeast, despite a military operation launched when emergency rule was declared.<\/p>\n
President Goodluck Jonathan, who has voiced frustration with the progress of the operation, replaced his top military brass on January 16, 2014.<\/p>\n
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and the continent’s largest oil producer, is scheduled to hold presidential elections in February 2015.<\/p>\n
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