Armed men kill students

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Armed men stormed a university hall in Nigeria, and opened fire on engineering students taking examinations, killing at least 15 people, witnesses and police said Wednesday.\nThe dead were mainly students. Several other people were seriously injured.\nOfficials at the University of Nigeria campus in Nsukka, near the southeastern city of Enugu, blamed Saturday's attack on members of an unidentified university secret society believed to be targeting a rival student group.\nThe assailants used three cars to flee the engineering complex. Police have arrested two students, Enugu Police Commissioner Nwachukwu Egbochukwu said.\nThe number of dead was still being determined, Egbochukwu said. Nigerian police routinely downplay or withhold casualty figures in a bid to suppress retaliatory attacks.\nSeveral university officials and students, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they counted 15 to 18 bodies, most of them students but including at least two lecturers.\nNigeria's daily Vanguard newspaper reported 18 killed.\nThe Nsukka campus and another in Enugu were closed indefinitely following the clash.\nRivalries between student movements at Nigerian universities are blamed for hundreds of deaths in campus clashes since the early 1990s.\nNigeria, a nation of 120 million people, is driven by a myriad of ethnic, religious and political conflicts. Thousands have been killed since the country's oppressive military rulers gave way to elected civilian government in 1999.