Another Boko Haram attack in Nigeria, 13 killed

An overnight attack by the Boko Haram militant group in a remote town of Nigeria's northeastern Borno state killed at least 13 people, a security officer said Friday.

The attackers stormed the Gajigana town, 45 km north of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno late Wednesday and raided the town till early Thursday, the security officer said on the condition of anonymity, Xinhua reported.

"They set fire to houses and this forced people to flee the town," the source said, noting that the insurgents shot sporadically on the fleeing residents.

A survivor said that the heavily-armed attackers invaded their town in open vans, adding that children and women were part of the casualties.

"More corpses may still be (lying undiscovered) in the surrounding bushes, and some burned houses. Many others were injured," the fleeing resident said.

Local officials in the area had arranged for the burial of the victims Thursday, even as military authorities declined to comment on the attack, according to the Xinhua report.

Boko Haram, which has proved to be a major security threat in Nigeria since 2009, seeks to enshrine the Islamic Sharia law in the constitution of Africa's most populous country.

The radical Islamist terror group Boko Haram, a name, that is translated from the local dialect, means "non-Islamic education is a sin", has killed more than 3,000 people this year, according to the Nigerian government.