B’Haram Kills 20 In Borno

There seems to be no end in sight to the Boko Haram insurgency as some men believed to be members of the sect waylaid traders returning from a local market in Borno killing 18 of them.

Also, a senior officer of the Department of State Security said that some hours earlier, another set of gunmen had attacked Sabon-Kasuawa in Hawul Local Government Area of the state and killed the village head and one of his guards.

It was gathered that the sect attacked two buses on the Bama-Gwoza Road; and shot dead 18 traders who were returning from a market at Pulka on Tuesday at about 4pm.

Pulka is Nigerian border town with Cameroon; and 119 kilometres south of Maiduguri, the capital of troubled Borno state.

The marauders, according to an eyewitness, Hamba Tada, ambushed the traders, who were going back to their homes after selling their wares, at Wala village, 10 kilometres to Gwoza.

The witness said the traders were compelled to come down from the two buses; and subsequently asked to identify themselves by insurgents.

Tada narrated that, “the insurgents asked the traders to identify themselves first, before the drivers are allowed to proceed on the barricaded road; and when you identify yourself as a Gwoza resident, the gunmen shoot and kill the person.”

He lamented that, “Unfortunately, all the occupants of the two buses are residents of the town, and that was how the traders were shot and killed.”

He however claimed that, “non-residents of Gwoza, on that road, after the insurgents mounted a road block at Wala, were allowed free passage, without being killed.”

He explained that the selective killings at the village might have been as a result of the sect’s belief that the people of Gwoza town provided information to the military and other security agencies which led to a clampdown on the sect that led to the arrest of one of their commanders last month.

He claimed that the Bama-Gwoza Road was not well patrolled by security agencies, stressing that, ‘We sighted about two patrol vehicles last Sunday in the evening towards the Sambisa Forest, but the following day, Monday; no military or police vehicle passed through this road to protect us from the activities of the insurgents. The absence of soldiers on this road enabled the gunmen to strike easily and kill.”

He lamented that, “After perpetrating their heinous crimes, the gunmen fled to the Mandara Mountain and Sambisa Forest; and then returned to this road to ambush and kill innocent people,” insisting that”the insurgents know these terrains better than the military and it is easy for them to perpetrate terrorist activities in the Bama-Gwoza axis.”

A senior police officer who does not want his name in print, said besides the Chibok abduction of 100 female students, 18 people were feared dead at a village in Gwoza Local Government Area.

He disclosed that the traders were returning from a border town market of Pulka, when the insurgents laid ambush on the road and slew over a dozen travelers from two buses.