Residents of Kukuwa-Gari village in Yobe state
were thrown into pandemonium as gangs of
militants arrived on motorcycles and a car and
opened fire of them, local residents said on
Tuesday.
Up to 150 people drowned in a river or were shot
dead fleeing the insurgents who attacked them on
Thursday last week. “They opened fire instantly,
which forced residents to flee. They shot a number
of people. Unfortunately many residents who tried
to flee plunged into the river which is full from the
rain. Many drowned,” Modu Balumi, a resident of
“By our latest toll we have 150 people either (shot
dead) or drowned in the attack. The gunmen
deliberately killed a fisherman who tried to save
drowning residents of the village.” Balumi said the
bodies of many of the drowned were picked out by
locals several kilometres away.
News of the attack was slow to emerge because
the militants have destroyed telecom masts around
the village, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from
Yobe State capital Damaturu, since the insurgency
began in 2009. “Most residents, particularly women
and children, ran towards the river in
confusion,”said Bukar Tijjani, another villager, who
confirmed the death toll.
“They were pursued by the gunmen who kept firing
at them. In the frantic effort to escape they jumped
into the river, which was full to the brim.” A local
government official confirmed the attack but put
the death toll much lower, at around 50.
Massacre
The ambush came during the region’s peak rainy
season, when most waterways in northeastern
Nigeria are swollen and can flow with dangerous
speed. The village was still reeling from a raid by
suspected Boko Haram militants on July 31 when
at least 10 people were killed by gunmen who
burned homes, food silos and livestock.
The Gujba area of Yobe state, where Kukuwa-Gari
village is located, has been hit hard by Boko
Haram violence in the past but had seen relative
calm since troops reclaimed it in March. In
September 2013 scores of students of an
agricultural college in the area were massacred as
they slept in their dormitories.
In February last year dozens of students of a
boarding secondary school in the main town of
Buni Yadi were also killed in a gun attack on their
hostels. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for
both attacks. The jihadist militia, which has
pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, has
waged a violent campaign for a separate Islamic
homeland in the northeast which has seen more
than 15,000 deaths since 2009.
The military under President Muhammadu Buhari’s
predecessor Goodluck Jonathan was heavily
criticised for poor handling of the insurgency and
its failure to free more than 200 schoolgirls
abducted from the northeastern town of Chibok in
April last year.
Nigeria’s new leader, who came to power on May
29 vowing to destroy Boko Haram, replaced his
military chiefs last week, ordering them to end the
insurgency within three months.
Anti-terror force
Since May, the militants have stepped up their
campaign with a wave of raids, bombings and
suicide attacks which have left more than 1,000
people dead in Nigeria alone, according to an AFP
count. The Islamists have also carried out deadly
ambushes across Nigeria’s borders and in recent
weeks suicide bombers, many of them women,
have staged several attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon
and Chad.
A five-nation regional force of 8,700 troops from
Nigeria and its neighbours has been set up to fight
Boko Haram and is expected to deploy imminently.
Buhari told a national security gathering in Abuja on
Monday his government would employ “at least an
extra 10,000 police officers” and set up a federal
anti-terrorism task force to crush the rebellion.
Chadian leader Idriss Deby declared on August 12
that efforts to combat Boko Haram had succeeded
in “decapitating” the group and would be wrapped
up “by the end of the year”.
Deby told reporters in the capital N’Djamena that
Boko Haram was no longer led by the fearsome
jihadist commander Abubakar Shekau and that his
successor, whom he named as Mahamat Daoud,
was open to talks. But Shekau dramatically
rebuffed the claim in an audio recording released
on Sunday and authenticated by security analysts,
dismissing the Chadian head-of-state as a
“hypocrite” and a “tyrant”
