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
the village, told newsmen.
“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”.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/08/150-people-shot-drowned-in-yobe-river-by-boko-haram-gunmen/

A

Buhari should plz deploy Navy to Yobe before they'll Start using our water, May the soul of the departed rest in peace

can this be true?