Nigeria – Jihadist attack kills 30 in northeast

– Jihadist attack kills 30 in northeast

The attack was carried out on Saturday in the village of Mudu, near the border with Chad, in retaliation for an army raid.

Posted today at 01:09

In recent weeks, the Nigerian military has carried out successful ground and air raids once morest ISWAP and rival Boko Haram fighters, killing several jihadist commanders.

AFP

Thirty people were killed in northeast Nigeria in an attack by jihadists in retaliation for an army raid, two militia leaders said on Tuesday. This attack was carried out on Saturday in the village of Mudu, in Borno State near the border with Chad by jihadists of the organization Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap), it was indicated. from the same source.

It only became known on Tuesday due to the poor quality of the communications network, the jihadists having destroyed several telecommunications relays in the region. The 30 victims were “scrap metal workers who were in the area looking for burnt-out vehicles, which are numerous in villages in northern Borno due to terrorist attacks,” Babakura Kolo, head of a police station, told AFP. militia in the regional capital Maiduguri. The men killed in the attack had come on foot from camps for displaced people in the town of Rann, 80 km away.

The offensive army once morest the jihadists

According to another militia leader, Umar Ari, Iswap accused the scrap dealers of informing the army regarding their positions in the region. “The thirty men had the misfortune to be in the area when the terrorists were mourning the death of their two commanders killed in a military operation,” Umar Ari told AFP. In recent weeks, the Nigerian military has carried out successful ground and air raids once morest ISWAP and rival Boko Haram fighters, killing several jihadist commanders.

ISWAP split from Boko Haram in 2016, and gradually rose to become the most powerful jihadist group in the region. Both groups are increasingly targeting civilians, including loggers, farmers and herders, whom they accuse of spying on them. Jihadist violence has claimed more than 40,000 lives and forced some 2.2 million people from their homes in northeastern Nigeria since 2009, according to the UN.

Most of the displaced people live in camps and depend on food aid provided by humanitarian organizations. Many of them are forced to cut down trees in this arid region to obtain firewood, and to collect scrap metal which they sell to buy food. Jihadist violence in Nigeria has spread to neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. To combat them, the armies of the four countries, as well as that of Benin, reactivated in 2015 a Mixed Multinational Force (MMF), created in 1994 but very little operational since.

AFP

Posted today at 01:09

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