The death toll in attacks by gunmen in the Nigerian town of Mubi has reached 21, the Red Cross said today as reports of fresh attacks on Christians in the country's northeast have heightened fears of a sectarian conflict.
Gunmen opened fire in a hall in Mubi yesterday where a group of Christians had gathered to mourn the deaths of those killed in an attack the previous day.
"Unknown gunmen in Mubi attacked and killed 3 people on Thursday night and on Friday as people gathered to mourn the deaths, the gunmen believed to be the same attackers killed 18 people, totalling 21," a Red Cross official said.
Mubi is in Adamawa state, just south of Borno state, the homeland of radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, whose members have been behind almost daily attacks in recent months.
Local residents in the Adamawa state capital Yola said gunmen had fired on Christians leaving church on Friday, killing several people. The police were not able to confirm the attack.
Elsewhere, a Christian couple were shot dead on Friday in the Mairi ward of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and the nucleus of Boko Haram's violence in the last 18 months.
"A Christian husband and wife have been killed in the night (Friday) in Maiduguri," said Colonel Victor Ebhemele, operations officer in the Borno joint task force.
A Nigerian newspaper this week published a warning from Boko Haram, a movement styled on the Taliban and whose name means "Western education is forbidden", that
Christians had three days to leave majority Muslim areas in northern Nigeria or be killed. The Red Cross official said members of the Igbo ethnic group, who are usually Christian and a minority in the mainly Muslim north were fleeing the northeast. Most of the people killed in Mubi were Igbo, local residents said.