Gunmen kill Worshipers at Nigeria Mosque

Gunmen have opened fire on Muslim worshipers
as they were leaving a mosque in northern
Nigeria, killing at least 20 people, a local official
said.
The attack on Sunday happened in a remote
village called Dogo Dawa, in Kaduna state, said
Abdullahi Muhammad, the traditional ruler and
councillor of Birnin Gwari, a local government area
next to the village.
The state police commissioner Olufemi Adenaike
confirmed the incident, but did not give a death
toll. There was no immediate claim of
responsibility for the attack.
Like much of northern Nigeria, Kaduna is plagued
by an insurgency led by radical Islamist sect Boko
Haram. They usually attack security forces,
government officials or Christians, but have hit
Muslim clerics and mosques in the past, especially
ones that do not follow their brand of Islam.
Kaduna also lies close to Nigeria's volatile "Middle
Belt", where Nigeria's mostly Muslim north and
largely Christian south
meet, and where tensions over land and ethnicity
often erupt into violence.
But Abdulladhi said the attack was most likely
carried out by a local criminal gang.
"We are suspecting a reprisal attack by gangs of
armed robbers who lost some of their members
after a recent exchange
of fire with the villagers and the vigilantes," he
said.
"The village had been terrorised by an armed
group operating from camps in the forest. These
armed men mostly attack villages and motorists
along the busy Kaduna to Lagos highway."
The Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria and
weapons flooding in from its neighbours on the
threshold of the Sahara
have aggravated levels of violence in the region.
Armed robberies and local disputes degenerating
into deadly shootouts are increasingly common
across the impoverished north.