A Chinese construction worker was killed on Friday in the besieged city of Maiduguri, Borno State in Nigeria’s northeast, an official said Friday, exacerbating security concerns for foreign workers in Nigeria’s violence-wracked North-East.
An overnight raid in a nearby city left 5 others dead and several schools razed to the ground, the Associated Press reports.Gunmen shot the Chinese builder Friday morning on a main road that had been undergoing reconstruction in the city of Maiduguri, said the Borno State Ministry of Works spokesman Babakura Bukar.
He said it was not immediately clear if the Chinese national had survived the bullet wound, but a hospital source that requested anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to press said that the hospital received the dead body of a Chinese man at about noon Friday.
An AP reporter who went to the construction site on Lagos Street said all workers, Chinese and Nigerian, had deserted it Friday afternoon.
With the road partly excavated, there remained only a narrow lane for motorists to use. Lagos Street is the main link to the busy neighbourhood that houses the state’s university.
Bukar could not say when or if the construction workers would return and the Chinese embassy could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.
The incident comes about two weeks after a Chinese cook for another construction company was shot dead while shopping at a food market in a town outside Maiduguri.
Several Chinese construction companies operate in Nigeria. In Borno state, most, if not all, government-funded projects are being undertaken by Chinese companies.
The region is largely rural but, with a growing and increasingly urbanised population, there has been a greater need for basic infrastructure, such as roads and offices.
For years, foreigners including Chinese, Lebanese, Indians, and others, have run businesses or worked in construction in Nigeria’s once-peaceful arid north as well as its central plains.
In Potiskum, a city 140 miles (230 kilometers) west of Maiduguri, an AP reporter saw two corpses in a car and three others lying on the road Friday morning after gunshots and blasts echoed throughout Thursday night.
He also counted five burned down primary schools; two Islamic schools and three public ones. Similar raids have previously been blamed on Boko Haram, but local police could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
Except for last year’s Aug. 26 attack on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, which killed 25 people, including a Norwegian, a Kenyan and an Ivorian, Boko Haram has not appeared to have a specific interest in foreign targets and there was no claim of responsibility Friday for the Chinese worker’s killing.
However, over the last year, a series of attacks in northern Nigeria have claimed the lives of foreigners.
In May, gunmen in Kaduna state shot and killed a Lebanese and a Nigerian construction worker, while kidnapping another Lebanese employee. Later that month, kidnappers shot a German hostage dead during a rescue operation.
Gunmen who authorities say have links to Boko Haram also kidnapped an Italian and a British man last year in Kebbi State.
The sect later denied taking part in the abduction.
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Source : punchng[dot]com
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