Those who watch events are all aware that the world is a cold and brutal place. But a couple of recent high profile events seem to have moved the line of cold hearted viciousness.
The first is the attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya by Islamic militants, al-Shabaab. First because it is a shopping mall, not a government or military installation. But now the details are coming out about what happened to the victims in the mall. They were not merely killed. The al-Shabaab militants found it necessary to torture their victim in hideous ways. They cut or tore off their victims body parts with pliers and skewered babies on knives. You can read the details here. They are graphic and disturbing.
Then just this morning in Nigeria, Islamic militants with Boko Haram attacked a small agricultural school in the town of Gujba in the Yobe state. They came into a dormitory around 1:00 am. while most of the students were sleeping. They rounded the students up and murdered them. There are reports that as many as 50 students were killed.
The targets in both of these incidents were not military, political or religious in nature. And in both incidents, the killings were particularly cold and brutal. They seem to be planned to spread fear among people who are non-combatants doing ordinary things, in these cases, shopping and sleeping. The high profile nature of the incidents is meant for people to see the vicious and random nature of these crimes and fear that the same thing could happen to anyone.
This video contains graphic images.
The targets in both of these incidents were not military, political or religious in nature. And in both incidents, the killings were particularly cold and brutal. They seem to be planned to spread fear among people who are non-combatants doing ordinary things, in these cases, shopping and sleeping. The high profile nature of the incidents is meant for people to see the vicious and random nature of these crimes and fear that the same thing could happen to anyone.
This video contains graphic images.
Nigeria Gujba Attack ~ Militants kill 50 students in college September 09 29 2013
Boko Haram suspected in mass murder of students
Suspected members of Islamist militant
group Boko Haram shot dead dozens of students, some of them while
they slept, at a college in northeastern Nigeria in the early hours
of Sunday morning.
Suspected Islamist militants stormed a
college in northeastern Nigeria and shot dead around 40 male
students, some of them while they slept early on Sunday, witnesses
said.
The gunmen, thought to be members of
rebel sect Boko Haram, attacked one hostel, took some students
outside before killing them and shot others trying to flee, people at
the scene told Reuters.
“They started gathering students into
groups outside, then they opened fire and killed one group and then
moved onto the next group and killed them. It was so terrible,”
said one surviving student Idris, who would only give his first name.
“They came with guns around 1 a.m.
(2400 GMT) and went directly to the male hostel and opened fire on
them ... The college is in the bush so the other students were
running around helplessly as guns went off and some of them were shot
down,” said Ahmed Gujunba, a taxi driver who lives by the college.
Boko Haram, which wants to establish an
Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has intensified attacks on
civilians in recent weeks in revenge for a military offensive against
its insurgency.
Several schools, seen as the focus of
Western-style education and culture, have been targeted.
Boko Haram and spin-off Islamist groups
like the al Qaeda-linked Ansaru have become the biggest security
threat in Africa’s second largest economy and top oil exporter.
Western governments are increasingly
worried about the threat posed by Islamist groups across Africa, from
Mali and Algeria in the Sahara, to Kenya in the east, where Somalia’s
al-Shabaab fighters killed at least 67 people in an attack on a
Nairobi shopping mall a week ago.
Bodies were recovered from dormitories,
classrooms and outside in the undergrowth on Sunday, a member of
staff at the college told Reuters, asking not to be named.
A Reuters witness counted 40 bloody
corpses piled on the floor at the main hospital in Yobe state capital
Damaturu on Sunday, mostly of young men believed to be students.
The bodies were brought from the
college, which is in Gujba, a rural area 30 miles (50km) south of
Damaturu and around 130 miles from Nigerian borders with Cameroon and
Niger.
State police commissioner Sanusi Rufai
said he suspected Boko Haram was behind the attack but gave no
details.
