Residents in northeastern Nigeria said on Wednesday, November 1, 2023, that extremists had killed at least 37 villagers in two separate attacks, underscoring once again the lethality of Islamic extremist rebels in their 14-year struggle in the severely affected area.
This was the first attack in Yobe State in over a year. On Monday and Tuesday, the extremists targeted villagers in the Geidam district of the state, killing 17 people initially with gunfire then killing 20 more who had gone to the burial with a land mine, according to witnesses.
The Islamic extremist group Boko Haram began an insurgency in 2009 with the goal of imposing their strict version of Sharia, or Islamic law, throughout northeastern Nigeria. With the concentration of extremist violence in Borno state, which borders Yobe, at least 35,000 people have died and over two million have been displaced.
After assuming office in May, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has failed to put an end to the country’s security crises in the northeast, northwest, and central areas, where several armed groups have been murdering villages and robbing tourists of their valuables in exchange for ransom.
17 people were killed in the first incident, which happened late on Monday in the isolated Gurokayeya village in Geidam, according to local resident Shaibu Babagana. Babagana also stated that on Tuesday, a land mine exploded, killing at least 20 people who had gone to attend their funeral.
According to Idris Geidam, a fellow resident, the death toll exceeded forty. The official death toll was unavailable, as is commonly the case after such attacks, according to the authorities.
“This is one of Boko Haram’s most horrifying recent attacks. It is absolutely horrifying for a burial group to be targeted so soon after losing a loved one, Geidam remarked.
The attacks, which the Yobe state government attributed to Islamists who crossed into the state from neighboring Borno, prompted the call for an emergency security conference on Wednesday.
“The security agencies have deployed security men to the area and we are studying a report on the infiltration in an effort to stave off future occurrences,” Abdulsalam Dahiru, a Yobe government security aide, told reporters.
Ref: AP
