“Scores of Boko Haram fighters blocked a route linking Nigeria with Chad near the fishing village of Doron Baga on the shores of Lake Chad on Thursday and killed a group of 48 fish traders? on their way to Chad to buy fish,” Abubakar Gamandi, head of the fish traders association, told AFP.Gamandi said that after setting up a barricade at Dogon Fili, 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Doron Baga in Borno state, the attackers stopped a convoy of fish vendors around midday, silently slaughtering some and drowning others in the lake.
“The Boko Haram gunmen slit
the throats of some of the men and tied the hands and legs of the others before
throwing them into the lake to drown,” Gamandi told AFP by telephone from
Maiduguri, the Borno state capital. It was unclear if the motive for the
gruesome attack was robbery or if there were other reasons for the killings.
Boko Haram has at times targeted residents seemingly indiscriminately in its
deadly insurgency.
Doron Baga, 180 kilometres
from Maiduguri, is the base of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF),
comprising troops from Nigeria, Chad and Niger fighting the Islamist group. The
MNJTF was formed in 1998 to fight trans-border crime but its mandate has been
expanded as part of efforts to tame the Boko Haram insurgency in the region. Gamandi
claimed the assailants killed all of their victims without using their guns.
“The attackers killed their
victims silently without the use of the gun to avoid attracting attention from
the multi-national troops,” he said. News of the attack was slow to emerge due
to the destruction of mobile phone towers in the area by Boko Haram in previous
attacks. A military officer in Maiduguri confirmed it but said details were
sketchy.“
We heard of the attack near
Doron Baga but we don’t have any details because the area falls under the
operational jurisdiction of the MNJTF,” the military officer said. ‘Barbaric
act’ – In nearby Niger, visiting French Prime Minister Manuel Walls condemned
“a new barbaric act” by what he called “a terrorist organisation”. “This is a
new illustration of the threat posed by this group, this sect, on the people of
Nigeria as well as those of neighbouring countries,” he said.
Incessant Boko Haram
attacks have disrupted fishing and farming along the shores of Lake Chad.
Fishermen from Doron Baga have been forced to abandon fishing and have turned
to importing dried fish from neighbouring Chad.Gamandi said the Dogon Fili
route provided the safest passage for traders from Doron Baga to Chad as other
routes are infested with Boko Haram gunmen who rob and kill travellers.
Last December at least
seven fishermen were killed when Boko Haram Islamists attacked Doron Baga in a
night-time raid that left many homes burnt. In August, the Islamists raided
Dogon Baga and kidnapped 97 people after killing 28 villagers.
The hostages, including
women and children, were loaded on speed boats and ferried across the lake into
Chad.Chadian troops rescued 85 of the hostages when they intercepted a convoy
of buses transporting them from the shores.
More than 13,000 people
have been killed since the insurgency began in 2009 and Boko Haram is now said
to be in control of more than two dozen towns in Nigeria’s northeast in its
quest for a hardline Islamic state.
The Islamists have made
major gains over the past 18 months and violence has continued at a relentless
pace in three north-eastern states that had long been under a state of
emergency.
The emergency measures
expired this week and President Goodluck Jonathan, who is running for
re-election in February, has yet to get a parliamentary approval for an
extension.
BBC news
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