Eight killed in Boko Haram attack in Nigeria

Boko Haram fighters have killed eight people in an attack in Nigeria‘s northeastern city of Maiduguri, a leader of a civilian task force said.

Two residents were shot dead and two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Friday’s attack on Maiduguri’s Jiddari Polo neighbourhood. 

The incident comes a day after the group overran a military base north of Maiduguri on Thursday, stealing an armoured vehicle and torching buildings in the attack. “Several soldiers” went missing in the Thursday’s attack, two military sources said on condition of anonymity.

“We recovered a total of eight bodies of residents killed in the Boko Haram attack,” Haram Abba Aji-Kalli of the Civilian Joint Task Force told the AFP news agency.

The attack took place hours before Nigeria’s electoral commission announced it was postponing Saturday’s presidential and parliamentary elections by a week.

The delay has been condemned by President Muhammadu Buhari, who is standing for a second term, and his main rival and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

A day earlier, at least four people were killed when the rebel group struck a convoy belonging to the governor of northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, of which Maiduguri is the capital.

In the hard-fought presidential campaign, Atiku has seized on Buhari’s failure to defeat the armed group, while the president claims the “insurgency” has weakened.