Gunmen open fire at Nigeria cattle market, 56 dead

A Nigerian hospital has received 56 bodies from an attack on a cattle market in the remote northeast overnight, a hospital nurse who gave his name as Babangida told Reuters by telephone.
   
Gunmen opened fire on a cattle market in the town of Potiskum, killing and wounding many people, witnesses and police said.
   
Yobe state police commissioner Moses Namiri said the toll was at least 34 and that Boko Haram was suspected as the attackers had also used explosives

"Yesterday gunmen came and attacked the market. There was sporadic shooting. I cannot give you the casualty figures yet," said Yobe state Police Commissioner Moses Namili.
   
Witness Mama Yusuf, a retired civil servant, said there were dead bodies on the ground, though he could not say how many.
   
"I saw dead bodies all around the place and the emergency services taking people to hospitals. I don't know how many died, but I saw deaths," he said.
   
Boko Haram has been fighting a low-level insurgency for more than two years and has become the main security threat facing Africa's top oil producer.
   
It usually targets police or authority figures but civilians have increasingly borne the brunt of its attacks.
   
Sometimes violence in Nigeria, especially in parts of the north or the volatile Middle Belt - where the largely Christian south and Muslim north meet - is driven by ethnic rivalry over land and resources that has little to do with the insurgency.
   
Boko Haram, which wants to impose an Islamic state on Nigeria's mixed population of Muslims and Christians, has been blamed for hundreds of killings since its uprising against the government began in 2009.
    
A spate of attacks in the past few days, including one against Christians in the north that killed 19 people on Sunday, have dampened hopes that tighter security had significantly reduced the sect's capability.
  
Nigerian forces killed the suspected mastermind of Sunday's attack on Christian worshippers, in a raid in the main northern city of Kano on Tuesday that resulted in a gun battle lasting several hours.

Reuters