Suspected Boko Haram militants have killed several people in two attacks on Nigerian villages that occurred after the government announced a ceasefire to enable 200 abducted girls to be freed, security sources and witnesses said on
Saturday.
However, the government cast doubt on whether
the attacks really were Boko Haram or one of
several criminal groups that are exploiting the
chaos of the insurgency. A spokesman said talks to
free the girls would continue in Chad on Monday.
The fresh attacks dashed hopes for an easing of
the northeast's violence, although officials
remained confident they can negotiate the release
of girls whose abduction by the rebels in the
remote northeastern town of Chibok in April
caused international shock and outrage.
A presidency and another government source
said they were aiming to do this by Tuesday.
Boko Haram, whose name translates roughly
as "Western education is sinful", has
massacred thousands in a struggle to carve an
Islamic state out of religiously mixed Nigeria,
whose southern half is mainly Christian in
faith.
Nigeria's armed forces chief Air Chief Marshal
Alex Badeh announced the ceasefire on Friday.
On Saturday, two senior government sources
said it aims to secure the girls' release as early
as Monday or Tuesday, although they declined
to give further details.
In the first attack, suspected insurgents
attacked the village of Abadam on Friday night,
killing at least one person and ransacking
homes, while another assault on the village of
Dzur on Saturday morning left at least eight
people dead.
"I was just boarding a bus when the gunshots
started," Adams Mishelia, who was in the
adjacent town of Shaffa, said of the Dzur
attack. "People were fleeing into the bush, so I
got off the bus and headed to the bush too. I
later learned they slaughtered eight people."
A security source confirmed that attack and the
assault on Abadam the night before. Mohammed
Bulama, a resident of the main northeastern city
of Maiduguri, told Reuters he lost his uncle in the
Abadam attack. Other casualties there were
unclear.
"DISCUSSIONS IN CHAD"
When asked about the violence, government
spokesman Mike Omeri said by telephone that
"the Boko Haram people have also said that some
attacks are not undertaken by them".
Boko Haram, seen as the biggest threat to Africa's
top economy and oil producer, is believed to be
divided into several factions that loosely cooperate
with each other, and it is unclear with which
faction the government has been negotiating.
"Discussions will continue in Chad next week, and
on the basis of those discussions we'll have more
details," on how the girls will be released, Omeri
said.
The announcement of the truce came a day before
a rally of supporters of President Goodluck
Jonathan in Abuja attended by his vice president,
Namadi Sambo, although an expected
announcement of Jonathan's candidacy for
February 2015 elections did not materialise during
the rally.
Officials at the presidency and military did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
Boko Haram has also not yet commented on the
reported truce. The group's sole means of
conveying messages is via videotaped speeches by
a man claiming to be Abubakar Shekau, its leader
whom the military last year said it had killed.
A history of abortive government attempts at truce
deals with Boko Haram and military claims to have
rescued some girls that proved false, mean
Nigerians are likely to greet the newly reported
breakthrough with scepticism.
The second government source said: "We are
negotiating with considerable caution. Boko
Haram has grown into such an amorphous entity
that any splinter group could come up disowning
the deal. (But) we believe we are talking to the
right people."
The talks were held with a formerly unknown
militant called Danladi Ahmadu, who says he is the
group's "secretary general".
Underlining the uncertainty over the chain of
command in Boko Haram, Nigeria's military said
at the end of last month a man who had been
posing as Shekau in the group's growing number
of videos had been killed in clashes over the town
of Konduga.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and its
oil-rich economy is the continent's largest.
The schoolgirls' abduction stunned the world,
spurred a global Twitter campaign to get them
rescued and heaped pressure on Jonathan's
administration to do more to protect civilians in
the northeast where Boko Haram's insurgency is
focused.
Several rounds of negotiations with the jihadist
movement have been pursued in recent years but
they have never yielded calm, partly because of
Boko Haram's internal divisions.
Since the girls' kidnapping, the Nigerian military
has twice asserted that it rescued some or all of
the girls, only to have to backtrack hours later.
At Saturday's rally in Abuja, many of President
Jonathan's supporters wrapped themselves in the
white and green of Nigeria's flag and sang and
danced under a banner reading "We Love You
Goodluck Jonathan. Our support is 100 percent."
Two candidates for the main opposition coalition,
former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and ex-
vice president Atiku Abubakar, have declared their
candidacy against Jonathan.

Wow

Something is seriously wrong