By Joe Hemba
DAMATURU, Nigeria (Reuters) - Fighter jets have
bombed camps belonging to suspected Islamist
militants in northeast Nigeria in response to a
massacre of students at an agricultural college, an
army spokesman said on Thursday.
The Islamist sect Boko Haram is suspected of
carrying out the night-time raid on a college in Yobe
state on Sunday, in which students were dragged
out of their beds and shot. Forty-one were killed.
Boko Haram, which has not claimed responsibility
for the attack, is fighting to impose an Islamic state
in religiously-mixed Nigeria. It has become the
biggest security threat to a country that is Africa's
second largest economy and top oil exporter.
"We used jet fighters to drop bombs on terrorist
camps, where many of the insurgents were killed,"
said Captain Eli Lazarus, military spokesman in
Yobe state.
He said the strikes were carried out on Monday near
Majari village on the border between Yobe and
Borno, the two states worst hit by Boko Haram's
four-year-old insurgency.
Soldiers have arrested 15 people suspected of
involvement in the college attack and patrols along
main roads in Borno and Yobe have been reinforced,
Lazarus said.
Nigeria's army has in the past exaggerated its
capabilities and successes and played down
casualties among soldiers and civilians, security and
diplomatic sources say.
Authorities have ordered greater security around
schools since Sunday's attacks to help restore
confidence in the Western-style education system
that Boko Haram wants banished, government
sources told Reuters this week.
Thousands have been killed since Boko Haram
launched its uprising in 2009. As it has grown bolder
and more deadly, it has also forged links with
Islamists in the Sahara, including al Qaeda's north
African branch.
Western governments are increasingly worried
about the threat posed by Islamist groups across
Africa, from Mali and Algeria in the Sahara to Kenya
in the east, where fighters from the Somali al-
Shabaab group killed at least 67 people in an attack
on a Nairobi shopping mall last month.
(Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Tim Cocks and
Kevin Liffey)
mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKBRE9920I620131003?irpc=932

Guys, vote for me (Stardom Artiste Contest) online at http://m.naijaartiste.net/contest/usbeel/