Nigeria is illegally holding hundreds of people suspected of participating in violence perpetrated by the armed group Boko Haram and is denying them access to lawyers, an international rights group has said. Amnesty International alleged in a report released on Thursday that most of those imprisoned around the country are held without criminal charges. Some of the suspects in detention have been summarily executed by security forces before facing trial, the London-based Amnesty said. The…

Zamfara, Nigeria - Gunmen suspected to belong to a violent robbery gang raided a remote village in Zamfara State, northern Nigeria, killing 20 people in an attack highlighting the growing insecurity in the nation, an official said Wednesday. The assault happened Tuesday morning before dawn in Kabaru, a village near other towns in Zamfara state that were recently attacked by the gang, state spokesman Nuhu Anka said. The gunmen shot dead most of those they…

A suicide bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a Catholic church in northern Nigeria, killing at least eight people, wounding nearly 100 and triggering reprisal attacks in which at least two more people died, officials said. The bomber drove a jeep into the packed St Rita's church in the Malali area of Kaduna, a volatile ethnically and religiously mixed city, on Sunday morning. A spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in…

There was pandemonium yesterday on an Arik Airline flight from Maiduguri, Borno State, en route Abuja, when a passenger, Mallam Aminu Galadima, stood up mid-air and shouted 'Allah Akbar' (God is great). Suspecting Galadima to be a suicide bomber linked to the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, other passengers panicked, triggering a melee on board the aircraft. Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, is the major operational base of the sect that has killed close to 2,000…