MAIDUGURI (Nigeria), Aug 13: Suspected Muslim militants wearing army fatigues gunned down 44 people praying in a mosque in northeast Nigeria, while another 12 civilians died in an apparently simultaneous attack, security officials said on Monday.

Sunday’s attacks were the latest in a slew of violence blamed on religious extremists in this West African oil rich country, where the radical Boko Haram group, which wants to oust the government and impose Islamic law, poses the greatest security threat in years.

It was not immediately clear why the Boko Haram would have killed worshipping Muslims, but the group has in the past attacked mosques whose clerics have spoken out against religious extremism. Boko Haram also has attacked Christians outside churches and teachers and schoolchildren, as well as government and military targets.

The news about Sunday’s violence in Borno state, one of three in the northeast under a military state of emergency, came as journalists received a video featuring Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who gloats over recent attacks, threatens more, and even says his group is now strong enough to go after the United States. The mosque slayings occurred on Sunday morning in Konduga town, 35km outside Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno state.

A state security service agent Usman Musa and a member of a civilian militia that works with the military said on Monday they counted the bodies at the mosque after the attack. Mr Musa said four members of his group — known as the Civilian Joint Task Force — also were killed when they reached Konduga and encountered “fierce resistance from heavily armed terrorists”.

Mr Musa and civil militia agent said the attackers wore military camouflage uniforms used by the Nigerian army, which they may have acquired in one of their attacks on military bases. On their way back from Konduga, the security forces came upon the scene of another attack at Ngom village, 5km outside Maiduguri, where Mr Musa said he counted 12 bodies of civilians.

Twenty-six worshippers at the mosque were hospitalised with gunshot wounds, said a security guard at the emergency ward of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. He and the state security agent both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to give information to reporters.

Nigeria declared a state of emergency in much of the northeast on May 14 to fight the onslaught after Boko Haram fighters took over several northeastern towns and villages in this nation of more than 160 million people, which is divided almost equally between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south.

In the video received by journalists on Monday, Boko Haram chief Shekau brushes off any gains asserted by the security forces.

“You soldiers have claimed that you are powerful, that we have been defeated, that we are mad people,” Shekau said, speaking in the local Hausa language. “But how can a mad man successfully coordinate recent attacks in Gamboru, in Malam Fatori, slaughter people in Biu, kill in Gwoza and in Bama, where soldiers fled under our heavy fire power?

“We have killed countless soldiers and we are going to kill more.”

He further insists the extremists’ “strength and firepower has surpassed that of Nigeria. ... We can now comfortably confront the United States of America”.—AP