Gunmen kill three policemen in Bauchi

FEBRUARY 29, 2012 BY AGENCY REPORTER 

Gunmen attacked a police station and a bank, killing three policemen in the attack, which occurred late Monday in Jama’are, Bauchi State, on Monday, the AFP reported on Tuesday.

Resident Muktar Dan-Abba told AFP on the telephone that he saw bodies of two policemen being taken away. A third corpse was discovered under the rubble of the burnt station.

“The police station has been burnt and two policemen were killed,” he said.

Another resident, Usman Musa, said the police station caught fire after several explosions which also brought down its roof.

“A bank was also burnt and its vault emptied,” he added.

There was no immediate official confirmation of Monday’s attacks which followed a similar assault in another northern town on Sunday in which three police corporals were killed.

In a separate attack in Maiduguri, where Boko Haram has stepped up bombing and shooting campaigns in recent weeks, gunmen shot dead an immigration officer, a police spokesman said.

“An immigration officer was shot dead by two gunmen this morning on his way to work and they made away with his laptop and some documents,” Samuel Tizhe said.

Meanwhile, smoke hovered over uniformed pupils frolicking in a playground on Tuesday, hours after assailants set their school ablaze in Maiduguri.

Assailants attacked Gamboru Primary School just after dawn and then, just about five kilometres away, razed a newly renovated, secular coeducational school in Maiduguri, military spokesman Lt. Col. Hassan Mohammed, told AFP.

He said there were no deaths and that the police were still investigating.

The attack came two days after a man using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa and speaking for Boko Haram told journalists that the sect was responsible for burning down another primary school in Maiduguri, its spiritual home, as a warning to security agencies not to raid Islamic schools.

SOURCE: The Punch, 29 February 2012. http://www.punchng.com