Nigerian president condemns Boko Haram attack on humanitarian workers

ABUJA, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari on Friday strongly condemned an attack by suspected Boko Haram fighters in the country's northeastern town of Rann, in which three aid workers were killed late Thursday.

In a statement, Buhari said the attack, more than ever, showed Boko Haram terrorists as "godless, brutish, and utterly to be despised."

Buhari, sympathizing with the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies working at Rann, said such cowardly attacks can only bolster the determination of the government to bring the Boko Haram terrorists to a decisive end, in the shortest possible time.

The UN on Friday confirmed the killing of three aid workers and said a fourth aid worker was feared killed and another likely abducted during the attack. A local nurse was also injured.

All the aid workers affected by the attack were Nigerian nationals, according to Samantha Newport, a UN spokeswoman in Nigeria.

Security sources said the attackers overran a military base in Rann, located about 150 kilometers west of Maiduguri, capital of the northern state of Borno, where the aid workers were killed.

The aid workers had fled their base inside a camp of internally displaced persons in Rann when the attackers stormed the place, said one security source who sought anonymity.

The source told Xinhua that some internally displaced persons and some local security operatives were also feared killed.

Last year, almost 200 people were killed when a fighter jet operated by the Nigerian military mistakenly bombed the same camp in Rann.

About a month ago, the Nigerian military claimed complete victory over Boko Haram but the terror group seemed to have waxed even stronger since then.

On Feb. 19, the terror group abducted 110 students from an all-girl college in Dapchi, a town in the northeastern state of Yobe.

The United Nations believes Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 innocent people since 2009 through terror attacks. Enditem