Is Boko Haram the most sadistic terror group in the world?

Gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram on Tuesday night shot or burned to death 59 boys in a boarding school in north-east Nigeria.

The raid at 2 am targeted the Federal Government College in the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state. The attackers reportedly hurled explosives into student residential buildings, sprayed gunfire into rooms and hacked a number of students to death.

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The savage group in its increasingly violent campaign has murdered students in their sleep, carried out a suicide attack on a UN building in Abuja in 2011. The group has also conducted multiple attacks against a wide range of targets, including Christians, Nigerian security and police forces, the media, schools, and politicians.

The militant group forbids western education and hence popularly known as Boko Haram. The word ‘boko’ is a holdover from the colonial English word for book.

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Boko Haram is a Sunni Islamist sect based in Nigeria that seeks to overthrow the current government and replace it with a regime based on Islamic law.

The radical group was created by Islamist cleric Mohammad Yusuf in 2002 in Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern state of Borno.

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The group suffered setbacks in July 2009 after clashes with Nigerian government forces which led to the deaths of hundreds of its members, including Muhammad Yusuf.

Since late 2012, Boko Haram and its splinter group Ansaru have claimed responsibility for three kidnappings of Westerners.

Violence between Christians and Muslims and harsh government treatment lef to the group’s radicalization, say experts. Boko Haram’s followers consist largely of impoverished northern Islamic students and clerics, as well as university students and professionals, many of whom are unemployed.

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A man, who was injured during an attack by Boko Haram militants, recuperates at the Bama General Hospital in Bama, Borno State.

Gunmen from Nigeria's Islamist Boko Haram sect killed 98 people in the northeastern town of Bama, residents there said after burying their folk, more than double the figure given by police a day earlier.

Gunmen stormed the town in the early hours of Wednesday, firing on a school, shooting or burning to death dozens of people and trashing the palace of a traditional ruler of one of West Africa's oldest Islamic kingdoms.

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A woman walks past homes destroyed by Boko Haram militants in Bama, Borno State.

The Islamist group's struggle for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria has killed thousands and made them the biggest threat to security in Africa's top oil producer, are increasingly preying on the civilian population, The Guardian reported.

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