5-Nov-11: Tentacles again in west Africa, and the toll is shooting upwards

Boko Haram terrorists: their doctrine declares
wearing pants a sin, but evidently not really

Back in August, we blogged about the Islamic terrorism that is increasingly gripping Nigeria. We wrote:

Like jihadists everywhere, the Boko Harams seek... to create chaos and terror, and to create a vacuum of stable governance, and then move to fill the void with Sharia, the only "solution" they will accept to the problem of their own deliberate making.

Tonight, there are reports of a massacre carried out by the Boko Harams:

A series of bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu has killed at least 63 people, the Red Cross says [but the BBC quotes witnesses who saw more than 90 bodies in the local morgue]. Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police. Many people are reported to have fled the town after a night of violence. The Islamist militant group Boko Haram told a newspaper it was behind the attack and that it planned to hit further government targets.

An Indonesian news report adds that "in a mainly Christian neighbourhood of Damaturu called Jerusalem, six churches were bombed in addition to a police station". It's reported that the Boko Harams want to see the establishment of an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. The name of their terrorist organization means "Western education is sin" in the regional Hausa language. Proving that they really mean it, they forbid the wearing of shirts and pants and voting in elections; reject Darwinism and the claim that the earth is a sphere ("contrary to Islam"); and are enraged by the suggestion that rain comes from water evaporated by the sun [BBC]. They may be lunatics, but their weapons don't know that.

UPDATE: Saturday night, 11:25pm - The unofficial toll of victims killed by the Nigerian terrorists is now said to be 150 [source].