At least 85 people were killed in
a weekend attack by Boko Haram insurgents in a village near the restive
north-east Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a state commissioner said on Monday.
Borno State health commissioner Haruna Mshelia said 75 bodies were brought into
the hospitals, while 10 others had been buried on Sunday. He gave the new toll
while briefing the state deputy governor and a military commander on Saturday’s
attack in Dalori, some 12 kilometres (seven miles) from Maiduguri, the state
capital.
Local residents and an
unidentified aid worker had said on Sunday that some 50 people were killed in
the attack. “A total of 65 bodies were
deposited at the specialist hospital, 10 others are being deposited at UMTH
(another hospital), while another 10 were buried yesterday evening at the
Dalori community cemetery” Mshelia said.
He said 16 villagers were unaccounted for. An eyewitness Bulama Malum said he saw more
than 20 bodies burnt beyond recognition and that 15 villagers were missing.
A member of the civilian joint
task force, assisting the military in the fight against Boko Haram said more
than 100 were killed in the incident, the latest to hit the restive
region. “Even as at last night the
people that died were over 100. I am sure many could have died today,”
vigilante Musa Adamu told AFP. “Anybody
that tells you that the figure is less than 100 is just not saying the truth,”
he said. Saturday’s attack occurred near a camp for people displaced by the
seven-year Boko Haram violence.
It also came as thousands of
internally-displaced people were returning to camps. The Borno State government
has said it was planning to return some 50,000 displaced people to their home
towns in the coming days. The Boko Haram insurgency has killed some 17,000
people and forced more than 2.6 million to flee their homes since 2009. The
group which seeks to impose strict sharia law in mainly-Muslim northern Nigeria
has also made cross border attacks into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
No comments:
Post a Comment