Nigeria: Scores arrested after Mubi college student killings
A picture taken October 2, 2012 at the Mubi morgue shows students gathering shortly after a massacre in a student housing area that left at least 40 dead. Nigerian police said on October 3, 2012 they had arrested many suspects following a massacre at a student housing area that left at least 40 people dead, with victims shot or their throats slit. The raid in the early hours of Tuesday near a polytechnic university shook the town of Mubi in Nigeria’s volatile northeast, where Islamist extremist group Boko Haram has carried out scores of previous attacks.
Nigerian police have arrested scores of people following the brutal killing of at least 26 people at a college student residence in the town of Mubi, in northeastern Nigeria's Adamawa state.
Police said Federal Polytechnic Mubi students living at an off-campus dorm were targeted by attackers who went door to door, shooting or stabbing, the BBC reported. Many of the student victims were called out by name.
Nigerian newspaper the Daily Trust said police had arrested more than 100 suspects, some of them students, in Mubi and nearby communities.
The paper said that some of the students killed in the attack late Monday night and early Tuesday were attending the College of Health Technology Mubi.
Another newspaper, Punch, put the death toll at 40, counting injured students who died in hospital.
Victims were said to be both Muslim and Christian.
More from GlobalPost: Nigeria’s Boko Haram gets serious
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the killings, and the motive remains unclear.
Yushua Shuaib, spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency, told Reuters it was not immediately clear whether the attack was by Boko Haram, or the result of a dispute between rival political groups at the college, which recently had a student election.
According to Punch, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan described the attack as "tragic, sad and shocking," and called for the swift arrests of those responsible.
The BBC said the attack comes just days after a major operation against Boko Haram in Mubi town.
Boko Haram, which means “Western education is a sin,” says it wants to impose Sharia law in Nigeria. The group has been waging an increasingly violent campaign against the Nigerian government since 2009.
More from GlobalPost: Can China save Nigeria?