Hyderabad National International Specials General

Boko Haram renews attack in Nigeria

Fri 20 Feb 2015

Abuja, February 21, 2015 (IANS) At least 21 people were killed as suspected Boko Haram fighters renewed armed attacks on three villages in northeast Nigerian state of Borno, witnesses and security sources said.

Militants stormed the villages on Friday near Chibok Town, where more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted 10 months ago in the southern part of Borno State, shooting sporadically, Dauda Ali, a Chibok resident who witnessed the attack, told Xinhua via telephone. “Only three villages were attacked but the losses here are humongous. The insurgents fired shots into people’s houses, razed people’s houses and commercial centers,” said Ali, who is a parent of one of the missing schoolgirls.

According to him, more than 10 people were killed in Gatamarwa, one of the villages attacked by suspected Boko Haram fighters. Another witness said women were among those killed in the attack. However, no official statement or confirmation has been, so far, made on the incident. A security source said due to the remoteness of the attacked communities, about 20 km to Chibok Town, government forces could not easily

access the link road, to intervene on time.

The terror attack occurred less than 24 hours after the military announced more terrorists were killed in a concerted air campaign on Thursday by the Nigerian air force to clear terrorists from all their enclaves.

The Nigerian military said the air strikes targeted the training camps and logistics dumps of the terrorists in Sambisa forests and parts of Gwoza in Borno State, a province known as the headquarters of the Boko Haram group. The military operation was highly successful, having achieved the aims with required precision, said the defense headquarters in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

Boko Haram has so far killed 13,000 people and displaced over 1 million others in various armed attacks in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

Leader of the armed group, Abubakar Shekau vowed to disrupt Nigeria’s general elections in a new video released on Tuesday. The group has in the past two months upgraded its practices from bombings, raids and kidnappings to trying to seize territories.

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