Zimpapers Logo

Kano – Brutal weekend attacks on three villages by Boko Haram Islamists in the restive northeast of Nigeria have left 30 dead and 20 others wounded, a vigilante said.

“Most of the victims were slaughtered and most of the wounded (had suffered) machete cuts,” Mustapha Karimbe, a civilian helping the Nigerian military fight Boko Haram, said of Saturday’s attacks in the villages of Warwara, Mangari and Bura-Shika in Borno state.

News of the attacks has been slow to emerge because telecom masts in the area have been destroyed in previous Boko Haram raids, hindering communication.

The Islamists invaded the villages, hacking and slaughtering their victims before setting the villages on fire. The villages are near Buratai, the hometown of Nigeria’s highest military chief Tukur Yusuf Buratai.

Warwara, where 20 people were killed, was the worst affected, said Musa Suleiman, another vigilante.

The attackers killed six people in Bura-Shika and another four in Mangari, he said.

The latest deaths take the number of people killed in Nigeria since President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May to more than 1,530, according to an AFP tally.

Residents of the villages fled to Biu, 30km away.

Buratai and nearby settlements have recently been the targets of deadly raids by Boko Haram, which have left scores dead and entire villages looted and burnt down.

Residents believe the attacks are in response to the pressure that the army chief is exerting on Boko Haram in counter-insurgency military operations.

On Thursday Boko Haram insurgents killed 14 people – decapitating some of them – when they raided Kamuya village, the hometown of the army chief’s mother, and burnt it down. Nigeria’s government has vowed to end the Boko Haram insurgency by this month but the deadline looks likely to be missed as attacks persist.

The Islamists’ grip on the region has suffered as a result of offensives launched by local armies, leading to raids like Saturday’s becoming rarer.

Meanwhile, Nigerian police have killed at least three Shia Muslim protesters after opening fire in the northern city of Kaduna, the spokesman for the religious minority in Nigeria said, as activists accused soldiers of having killed hundreds in “a massacre” in a nearby town in recent days. But police spokesman Zubairu Abdullahi denied any killings and said Shia protesters tried to attack a police station on Tuesday.

“We only repel the sect who attempted to attack our station,” he said. “We only used tear gas to disperse them. Maybe in the process of dispersing them, they sustained injury, I don’t know.”

Ibrahim Musa, a spokesman for the Shia Islamic Movement in Nigeria, said three people were killed and 10 wounded when police shot “peaceful protesters”.

Demonstrators were condemning the mass killings over the weekend and early Monday in the ancient Muslim university town of Zaria, and demanding the military release their leader, Ibrahim Zakzaky.

Amnesty International said in a statement on Tuesday evening that the shooting of members of the Shia group in Zaria “must be urgently investigated . . . and anyone found responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice”.

“While the final death toll is unclear, there is no doubt of that there has been a substantial loss of life at the hands of the military,” said MK Ibrahim, director of Amnesty International, Nigeria.

Musa said soldiers on Monday carried away about 200 bodies from around Zakzaky’s home in Zaria, and hundreds more corpses are in the mortuary.

Human rights activists said hundreds, perhaps as many as 1,000, have been killed. Al Jazeera has not been able to verify the death toll.

The army said troops attacked sites in Zaria after 500 Shia demonstrators blocked the convoy of Nigeria’s army chief, and tried to kill him on Saturday.

A report from the military police claimed that some were crawling through tall grass towards General Tukur Buratai’s vehicle “with the intent to attack the vehicle with [a] petrol bomb” while others “suddenly resorted to firing gunshots from the direction of the mosque”.

Chidi Odinkalu, of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission, called the attacks “a massacre”. He posted photos on social media showing a bulldozer tearing apart a Shia shrine, but doubts later emerged about whether the image was actually from Zaria. He also said that Zakzaky’s home was destroyed. – AFP