20120228
AFP
Gunmen killed three policemen in an attack on a police station in northeast Nigeria, the latest in a wave of near daily violence blamed on Islamist group Boko Haram, police said Monday.

The attack occurred on Sunday night in Adamawa State where nearly two dozen of Christians Igbos were shot dead in January.

"Some gunmen attacked a police station in Shuwa (village) last night, killing three police corporals and wounding two others, including a police inspector," state police commissioner Adelere Chinaba said.

"The attackers used guns and explosives," Chinaba said by telephone from the state capital Yola.

At least 20 southerners were killed over two days in the state early January with up to 17 of them in a single attack on a house where Christians had gathered to mourn a friend shot dead the previous night, according to witnesses.

Boko Haram claimed it was behind the attacks.

Chinaba said police on Monday defused six unexploded home-made bombs left over from the attack.

The police chief declined to speculate whether the gunmen were members of Boko Haram Islamist group that have been behind similar raids on police stations across northern Nigeria.

Adamawa shares a border with Borno state, considered as a Boko Haram bastion.

Violence blamed on the sect, whose goals remain largely unclear, has since mid-2009 claimed more than 1,000 lives, including more than 300 this year alone, according to AFP and rights groups.

The sect has previously said it wants to create an Islamic state in Nigeria's deeply impoverished north.