Official: ‘Many, many’ killed in Islamic extremist attack on Nigerian border, property razed

LAGOS, Nigeria – A Nigerian state government official says “many, many” people have been killed by Islamic militants who attacked a northeastern border town.

Information commissioner Mohammed Bulama of northeastern Borno state said Wednesday that many shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the Monday night attack on Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon.

He said he has little information because the area is so remote.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgents are holding 276 teenage girls hostage and are threatening to sell them into slavery.

The rebels’ five-year-old Islamic uprising has claimed the lives of thousands of Muslims and Christians. The insurgents say Western influences are corrupting and they want to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of 170 million of whom half are Christian.