Many feared dead in Boko Haram reprisal attack

As Nigerians began to breathe air of relief from daily killings, members of the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram on Friday raided villages in northeast Nigeria on the border with Cameroon with many people feared dead.

According to AFP, the attack was a reprisal for a Chadian offensive against the sect’s hideouts. It was reported that several heavily armed extremist on Wednesday raided more than a dozen villages in the Kala-Balge district of Borno state, shooting, cutting residents to death and burning houses. The attacks reportedly led to hundreds of residents flee across the border into Cameroon, prompting Chad, which is among the regional coalition against the terrorist group to respond by bombarding the sect’s positions..


A resident from Anguduram village, who gave his name as Adum Walfannea, a Shuwa Arab told AFP that the Islamist militants targeted mainly Shuwa tribesmen, who are from the same ethnic group as a large number of the Chadian troops. According to Kurso Khala, who fled from one of the worst-affected villages of Mudu, revealed that the militants overwhelmed a local market and blocked all but one entrance.

“They would ask if a person is Kanuri or Shuwa before asking him to go. Once a person was identified as Shuwa‎ he would be shot in the back as soon as he stepped out of the market entrance to leave,” said Khala by telephone from Fotokol, across the border from the Nigerian town of Gamboru in the far north of Cameroon.

Walfannea and Imar Koshnana, from Musiye village, both said the death toll from the attacks could be high but there was no official confirmation of numbers.