A number of churches in northeast Nigeria were attacked by suspected
Boko Haram Islamists on Sunday, near the town of Chibok where more than
200 teenage girls were kidnapped in April.
Reuters News Agency captures Chilling details of how Boko Haram gunmen attacked three villages Sunday in Nigeria’s Borno State are emerging.
In Kautikiri village, the gunmen, in a Rwanda-style genocide, locked
up worshippers in the church and sprayed it with bullets, according to
survivors.
Samuel Chibok, a survivor of the attack here, about five km from
where the girls were snatched, said that around 20 men in a Toyota
pick-up truck and motorcycles rolled into the village. They sprayed it
with bullets, focusing much of their fire power on panicked worshippers
in a local church.
“Initially I thought they were military but when I came out, they
were firing at people. I saw people fleeing and they burned our houses,”
he said, adding that some people had died in the attack, including two
of his relatives.
“Smoke was billowing from our town as I left.”
A local pro-government vigilante, who declined to be named, said residents had now recovered 15 bodies from the village.
The attackers on Sunday made simultaneous strikes on three villages in the Chibok community, in Borno state.
Another attack on Kwada, eight km (five miles) from Chibok village,
left dozens of people dead, a security source operating in the area
said, although the precise toll was not yet clear.
A senior advisor to Borno state governor Kassim Shettima, who
declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak, said there
had also been a third attack on Nguragida, his home village which he
visited on Sunday. Nine bodies had been recovered from that attack, he
said.
Violence in Nigeria’s northeast has been relentless in the past year
and has gained in intensity since April, when more than 200 schoolgirls
were snatched by Boko Haram rebels from Chibok. Efforts to free them,
which have attracted Western support, have so far not succeeded.
In a separate assault on Friday evening insurgents killed seven
soldiers in the village of Goniri, in Yobe state, a security source and
witnesses said.
The Boko Haram fighters arrived in four armoured personel carriers
and 11 Hilux trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, said a security
source and a witness who gave his name only as Hamisu.
“They were all dressed in full military but they did not direct their
onslaught on the civilian population,” Hamisu said by telephone.
An explosion on Friday night in a brothel in the northeastern
Nigerian city of Bauchi killed 11 people and wounded 28, police said on
Saturday. This attack was also believed to be the work of Boko Haram.
A military operation in the northeast has so far failed to quell the
rebellion and has triggered reprisal attacks that are increasingly
targeting civilians, after they formed vigilante groups to try to help
the government flush out the militants.
But their tactics – often striking then fleeing over the border into
Cameroon – have repeatedly proved devastating. They are well armed and
funded by a lucrative kidnapping operation.
Here are some of the deadly raids, kidnappings and bombings that have been linked to Boko Haram this year by Agency France-Press:
- February 15, 2014: An attack blamed on the extremist sect leaves
more than 100 people dead in the mostly Christian village of Izghe in
the north-eastern state of Borno.
- April 14: Gunmen kidnap 276 female high school students in Chibok,
Borno. Fifty-seven managed to escape but the rest are still being held.
Several foreign countries, including the United States, have joined
forces to try to find the girls.
-April 14: A blast at a bus station packed with morning commuters at
Nyanya, on the southern outskirts of Abuja, kills at least 75 people,
the most deadly attack to date on the capital. Boko Haram claims
responsibility. On May 1, a car bomb at the same spot kills 19, and
leaves 80 injured.
- May 5: At least 300 people are killed in an attack in Gamboru
Ngala, in Borno state near the border with Cameroon, which totally
destroys the town.
- May 20: At least 118 are killed and 56 injured in two car bomb
attacks on a market in Jos, central Nigeria, which go off within 20
minutes of each other. The regional governor blames Boko Haram.
- June 1: At least 40 are killed when a bomb explodes at a football
stadium in Mubi in the north-east of the country shortly after a match.
The attack is blamed on Boko Haram.
- June 3: Hundreds are feared dead in a suspected Boko Haram attack
on four villages in Borno state, with local leaders putting the death
toll as high as 500.
- June 17: 21 football fans are killed when a bomb rips through the
viewing centre where they are watching the World Cup in Damaturu,
northern Nigeria.
- June 24: Local officials report 30 killed and more than 60 women
kidnapped in a series of attacks over several days in Borno state,
although the Nigerian government denies the abductions.
- June 25: At least 21 people are killed and 17 injured in a bombing
at a crowded shopping centre in the centre of Abuja. The attack — the
third on the city in three months — is blamed on Boko Haram.
- June 29: Suspected Boko Haram gunmen riding on motorcycles target a
number of churches during Sunday mass, opening fire on worshippers and
chasing them into the bush. Witnesses fear dozens are killed.
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