"Nigerian Taliban" blamed for killing of 3 South Korean doctors

POTISKUM, NIGERIA Assailants in northeastern Nigeria killed three South Korean doctors, beheading one of the physicians, in the latest attack on health workers in a nation under assault by a radical Islamic sect, officials said Sunday.

The deaths Saturday night of the doctors in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state long under attack by the sect known as Boko Haram, which some have dubbed the "Nigerian Taliban," comes after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

The two attacks raise new questions over whether the extremist sect, targeted by Nigeria's police and military, has picked a new soft target in its guerrilla campaign of shootings and bombings across the nation.


The attackers apparently struck at the South Korean doctors inside their home, an official at General Hospital in Potiskum, a government-run health facility, told The Associated Press. The South Korean doctors had no security guards at their residence and typically traveled around the city via three-wheel taxis without a police escort, said the official who insisted upon anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists.

By the time soldiers arrived at the house, they found the doctors' wives cowering in a flower bed outside their home, the official said. At the property, they found the corpses of the men, all bearing what appeared to be machete wounds.

An AP journalist later saw the South Korean doctors' corpses before they were moved to nearby Bauchi state for safe keeping. Two of the men had their throats slit. Attackers beheaded the other doctor.