News - World: Armed assailants have stormed a mosque in north-central Nigeria as Muslims had gathered for dawn prayers, gunning down as many as 27 of the worshippers.

The attack took place in the country’s Katsina State in early Tuesday.

Residents of the remote Unguwan Mantau community in the Malumfashi local government area said the gunmen opened fire around 04:00 GMT, causing the fatalities and wounding others.

A village chief confirmed the scale of the massacre, while a hospital official reported that survivors had been rushed in with gunshot injuries.

Pattern of relentless violence

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but such instances of bloodletting have reportedly become familiar across Nigeria’s northwestern and north-central regions.

The deadly violence has featured “bandits” waging raids on villages and ambushes on highways.

The deadly pattern saw a similar attack claim the lives of more than 100 people in north-central Nigeria in June.

Rights bodies have condemned the government’s failure to halt the spiral of killings.

They have noted that such violence was not limited to the northern regions, citing near-daily bloodshed throughout the country, including in Benue State in the southeast.

Also in June, a mass killing took place in Yelwata, a town in Benue, taking the lives of around 200 people.

Following Tuesday’s bloodshed, state commissioner Nasir Mu’azu announced that both the army and the police had been deployed to the Unguwan Mantau area.

Describing the circumstances surrounding many such incidents, he noted that attackers would exploit the cover of farmlands during the rainy season, hiding among crops to launch assaults on unsuspecting communities.

Nigeria’s Muslim community, which forms around half of the country’s population, has suffered countless casualties as a result of such assaults.

Waves of deaths began striking the country’s Shia community in 2015, when the government launched a brutal crackdown, accusing the faithful of threatening “national security.”

Source: Press TV