Thousands of bodies – too many to count – remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram. The killings are reported to have started on the 2nd of January 2015.
Fighting continued on Friday around Baga, a town on the border with
Chad where insurgents seized a key military base on 3 January and
attacked again on Wednesday.
An Amnesty International statement said there are reports the town was razed and as many as 2,000 people killed.
The previous bloodiest day in the uprising involved soldiers gunning down unarmed detainees freed in a 14 March 2014 attack on Giwa military barracks in Maiduguri city. Amnesty said then that satellite imagery indicated more than 600 people were killed that day.
Around 1.5 million people have been displaced by the violence, many of whom will not be able to vote in the polls under Nigeria’s current electoral laws.
Boko Haram also appears to be regionalising the conflict, after threatening neighbouring Cameroon in a video earlier this week.
As President Goodluck Jonathan continues to campaign around the nation, he reacted to the killings at his declaration in Oyo yesterday, Jan 12th 2015, where he said he has given the National Security Adviser order to investigate killings and ordered the NSA to come up with a comprehensive report which will be made public to Nigerians.
The five-year insurgency killed more than 10,000 people last year alone, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.
“Security forces have responded rapidly, and have deployed significant military assets and conducted air strikes against militant targets,” said a government spokesman.District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.
“The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous,” Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for poorly armed civilians in a defense group that fights Boko Haram, told the Associated Press.He said the civilian fighters gave up on trying to count all the bodies. “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now,” Gava said.
An Amnesty International statement said there are reports the town was razed and as many as 2,000 people killed.
The previous bloodiest day in the uprising involved soldiers gunning down unarmed detainees freed in a 14 March 2014 attack on Giwa military barracks in Maiduguri city. Amnesty said then that satellite imagery indicated more than 600 people were killed that day.
Around 1.5 million people have been displaced by the violence, many of whom will not be able to vote in the polls under Nigeria’s current electoral laws.
Boko Haram also appears to be regionalising the conflict, after threatening neighbouring Cameroon in a video earlier this week.
As President Goodluck Jonathan continues to campaign around the nation, he reacted to the killings at his declaration in Oyo yesterday, Jan 12th 2015, where he said he has given the National Security Adviser order to investigate killings and ordered the NSA to come up with a comprehensive report which will be made public to Nigerians.
The five-year insurgency killed more than 10,000 people last year alone, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.
Ironically, Yesterday, thousands of people led by world leaders
including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mali’s President
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, European
Council President Donald Tusk, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Switzerland’s President
Simonetta Sommaruga (pictured above) held a solidarity walk against
terrorism in honor of the 17 victims of the Charlie Hebdo shooting and
supermarket siege in the streets of Paris, France yesterday.
Yet just like American actor Boris Kudjoe said his post below, no
one seems to really be bothered about the biggest massacre that has
happened in Nigerian since Boko Haram started its insane killings in
2009.
My heart bleeds for this country, and the security situation.
The lives of the people in the North, killed on a daily basis
matter too, and should be treated as such by the government, and even
the international community (since the government appears to be clueless
as to how to combat this Boko Haram menace). This CANNOT continue to go
on. Nigeria is on fire, and we NEED HELP!
May the souls of the departed, brought to an end through this senseless act of violence rest in peace, AMEN!
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