The state police chief did not give a death toll from the attack.
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Less than 24 hours later, a girl blew herself up in a mosque in Malari village, more than 150 kilometres away from Wednesday’s attacks. They went there in the night when the villagers were resting after the day’s fasting and assembled them before opening fire on them.
President Buhari said the attacks were “the last desperate acts of fleeing agents of terrorism”. “From reports given to me”, the legislator said by phone.
“The military responded with aerial bombardments on terrorist positions”, he said, without giving further details.
The assaults began on Tuesday, when the militants shot dead 48 men after they had finished prayers in two villages near the town of Monguno, a resident told BBC Hausa.
“They actually dragged out 11 persons to the Eid praying ground outside the town and slaughtered all of them”, said Kimba.
“Many of us managed to escape amid volleys of bullets”, said the resident who asked not to be named for safety reasons.
Kukawa is 180 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeast Nigeria and the birthplace of Boko Haram.
The spike in violence has sparked concern that earlier victories claimed by the armies of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon in the region are being eroded. Boko Haram this year became the IS group’s West African franchise.
Despite their territorial losses, the insurgents have kept up their deadly raids, explosions and suicide attacks on “soft” targets such as markets and mosques.
They have intensified their strikes since President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to crush them when he was sworn in on May 29.
It is the fourth attack in a week in which at least 162 people have been killed, including four suicide bombers, as Boko Haram Islamic extremists appear to obey an Islamic State group order to step up attacks in the holy month of Ramadan.
Abbas Gava, spokesman for a regional vigilante group, said Boko Haram fighters also broke into people’s homes in Kukawa, killing women and children.
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“We have counted the bodies of 29 people and many others sustained injuries”, he added.
