20 killed in fresh Boko Haram attack in Borno

At least 20 people were killed when Islamist group Boko Haram attacked a town in Borno, triggering clashes with troops stationed there, the military said on Sunday.

An Army spokesman in Borno said the Islamists crept into the town of Damboa in the early hours of Saturday.

They killed five worshippers at a mosque as they said their morning prayers, he said.

“While they were unleashing their mayhem, troops engaged the terrorists, killing 15 in the process while others fled,” the military spokesman, Captain Aliyu Danja, said in a statement.

Despite a concerted military offensive meant to crush Boko Haram since May, it remains the biggest security threat to Africa’s top energy producer.

Its targets have traditionally been security forces, Christians or Muslim clerics who speak out against it, but its fighters have increasingly turned their sights on civilians in the past few months – massacring hundreds in roadside attacks or assaults on Western-style schools they consider sacrilegious.

Nigerian fighter jets last week bombed camps belonging to suspected Islamist militants in northeast Nigeria in response to a massacre of students at an agricultural college that killed at least 41.



Credit: Reuters