Boko Haram Kills Scores, Razes Town

Residents of Damboa, a town in Borno State, were yesterday evening picking the corpses of their dead ones after an early dusk attack by about 300 Boko Haram gunmen. The terrorists had invaded the town, located about 85km south of Maiduguri, shooting and killing defenceless villagers even as they torched nearly half of homes in the town. A top security official who did not want to be named confirmed the attack but said “no details on extent of damage yet”. Vigilante official Abbas Gava told journalists that “the casualty could be very high because my contacts in Damboa said they have picked over 40 corpses and they are still picking more; and many houses, nearly half of what remains of the often attacked town, have been burnt”. “They attacked the house of Damboa chief imam and that of the local government chairman and destroyed everything there,” said Gava. He said the gunmen descended upon the villagers when they were about to perform the early dawn prayers. Boko Haram gunmen attacked a military base in Damboa killing dozens of soldiers and four policemen a fortnight ago. The gunmen had laid a siege along the road leading from Maiduguri to Damboa and had forced soldiers going to the attacked base for evacuation of its destroyed munitions to turn back by launching some ambush shooting on them twice. Two more soldiers were reported dead in one of the ambush attacks. But the soldiers were able to return fire from an armoured tanker at a sniper with a rocket launcher who was firing from atop a tree, while others were shooting from the surrounding bushes, a witness said. Boko Haram had also cut off access to Damboa from the southern part of the road coming from Biu town, 100km from Damboa, by blowing up a major bridge on the highway, at a hamlet called Sabongari last Monday. Damboa, an agrarian village where Borno State sources most of its grocery and fruit supply, has suffered several attacks in the past two years. It was the reason the 7 Division of the Nigeria Army established an operational base called 33 Tank Battalion in Damboa. But since after the attack before yesterday’s, neither the soldiers nor the police could return to Damboa. The embattled villagers were left at the mercy of the sticks-and dane gun-carrying youth vigilante called Civilian-JTF.