African securityBoko Haram burns children to death in attack on Nigerian village
Boko Haram Islamist extremists have burned children to death in an attack on the Nigerian village of Dalori Saturday evening. In all, sixty-five people died in the attack. The militants set the buildings on fire, and as the fire spread, they shot people who were attempting to escape the flames.
Logo of Boko Haram // Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Boko Haram Islamist extremists have burned children to death in an attack on the Nigerian village of Dalori Saturday evening. In all, sixty-five people died in the attack.
The militants set the buildings on fire, and as the fire spread, they shot people who were attempting to escape the flames. Eye witnesses told the Independent that the shootings and burnings continued for four hours.
The violence did not end there. Some survivors managed to escape to the neighboring village of Gamori – but they did not realize that three female suicide bombers, pretending to have escaped from Dalori, followed them – then blew themselves when the survivors reached Gamori, killing many more people.
The Nigerian military said that dozens of charred corpses were lying in the streets of the village, which is located only three miles Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram.
Boko Haram has been increasingly targeting towns and villagers - viewing them as “soft targets.”
The Independent notes that former residents of Baga on the border with Chad, the scene of a massacre last year in which up 2,000 people were killed, are too frightened to return home as Boko Haram militants retreated to the heavily guarded islands around Lake Chad.
Baga once had 200,000 resident, but only 700 people remain in the city.
Boko Haram has launched its Islamist insurgency in 2009, aiming to establish an Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria. The group has so killed around 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.
