Gunmen have massacred at least 26 people in a student housing area in north-east Nigeria, calling victims out by name before killing them.
Residents of Mubi, in Adamawa state, say they heard gunfire for about two hours during the night.
Men reportedly moved from house to house, shooting people. Others had their throats slit.
Eyewitnesses say bodies were left in lines in front of the homes.
Police spokesman Mohammed Ibrahim says the attackers knew their victims and called them out by name in an off-campus area near a polytechnic school where students live.
He put the death toll at 25, including 19 students from the polytechnic, three students from a health technology school, two security guards and a retired soldier.
"We strongly suspect an inside operation," he said.
Adamawa state, like much of the north, been targeted by Islamist insurgents.
Last month, the Nigerian military carried out an operation in Mubi and arrested dozens of people with suspected links to the Islamist militant group popularly known as Boko Haram.
Boko Haram, which usually targets politicians or security forces, has also attacked students in the past and has cells in Adamawa.
Some officials however suggest the massacre may have been linked to a recent student election.
There were suggestions of ethnic tensions between the mainly Muslim Hausas and predominately Christian Igbos involved in the vote.
Violence has erupted between student gangs in the past in Nigeria, but it is not known to have previously led to a massacre on such a scale.
A spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency said reports indicated some of the victims were candidates in the polls.
"The crisis in Mubi is suspected to have been fuelled by campus politics after an election at the Federal Polytechnic," the agency's Yushau Shuaib said.
Mubi is not far from the city of Maiduguri in neighbouring Borno state, which is considered the base of the Islamist group that is blamed for killing more than 1,400 people in northern and central Nigeria since 2010.
The town has seen previous such violence, including in January, when gunmen opened fire on Christian Igbos at a house as they mourned the death of a friend killed in a shooting the night before.
ABC
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