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.
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 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.”
“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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