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Mourners at the funeral of the dead farm workers in Nigeria
Photo: AUDU MARTE / AFP
Suspected fighters of the Islamist group Boko Haram killed more than 40 farm workers in northeastern Nigeria on Saturday, according to a vigilante.
There are at least 43 victims, a militia leader told the AFP news agency.
Six people were seriously injured in the attack near the city of Maiduguri.
Eight other workers may have been kidnapped.
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack.
"The whole country has been wounded by these senseless killings," he said.
According to the militia leader, whose men are fighting against Boko Haram, the victims were attacked and handcuffed while they were working in rice fields in the village of Koshobe.
Then their throats were cut.
"We recovered 43 bodies," he said.
The attack was "undoubtedly" carried out by fighters from the Boko Haram militia.
The Islamists had already killed a total of 22 farm workers in two attacks near Maiduguri in October.
According to another member of the vigilante group, the farm workers had traveled to the northeast from the state of Sokoto, about a thousand kilometers away, in order to work in the fields.
The eight missing people are believed to have been kidnapped by the Boko Haram fighters.
Woodworkers and fishermen are targeted
Maiduguri is the capital of the state of Borno.
Local elections were held there on Saturday for the first time since the Islamist group's armed uprising began more than ten years ago.
Because of the ongoing violence, the vote had been postponed again and again.
Boko Haram and the West African IS offshoot Iswap recently increasingly attacked woodworkers, cattle farmers and fishermen because they allegedly worked as informants for the army.
Boko Haram has been fighting violently for an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria since 2009.
The attacks by the militias and their fighting with the army killed around 36,000 people in recent years.
Two more million men and women fled.
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