At least 56 villagers have been killed in a remote area of Borno state, following an attack by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.
Thursday, August 27, marked 500 days of captivity for the girls from a school in Chibok, Borno state.
Governor Kashim Shettima confirmed the attack in Baanu village during a meeting with the parents of the 219 girls abducted from a school in the region by the extremists in April 2014.
Thursday, August 27, marked 500 days of captivity for the girls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno state.
Shettima said: “I want us all to understand that the Boko Haram crisis is a calamity that has befallen us,” adding that “the insurgents do not discriminate whether somebody is Christian or Muslim, neither do they have any tribal sympathy or affiliations.”
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“Just yesterday they killed 56 people in Baanu village of Nganzai local government. As I am speaking to you their corpses are still littered on the street of the village because virtually everyone in the village had to run for their lives.” He did not provide further details of the attack.
Residents of Baanu village who fled said they were attacked by Boko Haram on the night of Friday, August 28.
Mustapha Alibe, a farmer, said: “We returned to the village in the morning after spending the night in the bush,” adding: “We saw corpses in the streets of the village.”
The six-year-old Boko Haram insurgency has left an estimated 20,000 people dead. At least 1,000 people have been killed by the militants since President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in March, pledging to wipe them out before the end of this year.
The extremists have been driven out by the multinational troops from some 25 towns held for months in an area Boko Haram had declared an Islamic caliphate. Since then, the insurgents, who in March pledged allegiance to Islamic State, have gone back to hit-and-run tactics and suicide bombings, largely in the country’s north.
Meanwhile, a government official said there has been a sudden influx of Boko Haram agents in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, and other parts of the country outside the militants’ main area of activity in north-eastern Nigeria.
Tony Opuiyo, a spokesman for the Department of State Services, said in a statement that Boko Haram was trying to extend its reach after being pushed out of the urban centres of north-eastern Nigeria.
According to Opuiyo, security agencies had arrested 14 Boko Haram suspects in Lagos, the capital Abuja and other parts of the country outside the north-east in the past two months. Those arrested include cell leaders, some of whom admitted to involvement in suicide attacks.
Authorities on Friday, August 28, said they arrested a teenager who was spying on Abuja’s international airport for Boko Haram.
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