Eight gunmen killed two persons and wounded four others during an attack on the Delta campus of the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region Tuesday, police said. The gunmen, who were suspected to be cultists, rampaged through the campus in search of its Chief Security Officer, shooting sporadically hitting the victims. Rivers state police spokesperson Rita Abbey said the gunmen, who came on motorcycles, killed a lecturer and a nursing mother and wounded a professor and three security personnel. She said policemen who responded to distress calls from the university killed two of the gunmen and arrested one. According to her, the Chief Security Officer who seemed to have been the target of the gunmen was not harmed. It was not known if the attack was linked to the violence currently sweeping the restive Niger Delta region, where attacks on oil installations have cut Nigeria’s oil production. Cultism is rampant in some Nigerian public universities, where rival cult groups clash incessantly in deadly attacks within and outside the campuses.
