Two suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers kill 'at least 10' in Nigeria

Two suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers have killed at least 10 people, bringing the number of people murdered by the Islamist militants in north-eastNigeria this week to more than 160.

Police in Borno state said that on Thursday a female suicide bomber killed seven people and injured 13 at a village called Malari on the main road from Bama to Konduga, while a second woman killed three in blast along the same road.

A military source told Reuters that both bombers had targeted crowded areas where locals sell fruit along the highway, which runs south-east of the state capital, Maiduguri.

The attacks came a day after the Islamist militants opened fire on mosques and houses in the village of Kukawa, leaving nearly 100 people dead. “The attackers have killed at least 97 people,” one local man told AFP, adding that he had counted the bodies.

“They wiped out the immediate family of my uncle,” he said. “They killed his children, about five of them, and set his entire house ablaze.”

Another witness, Babami Alhaji Kolo, who fled to Maiduguri where the attack took place, said more than 50 militants stormed the village early on Wednesday evening.

“The terrorists first descended on Muslim worshippers in various mosques who were observing the maghrib [evening] prayer shortly after breaking their [Ramadan] fast,” he said. “They ... opened fire on the worshippers, who were mostly men and young children.

“They spared nobody. In fact, while some of the terrorists waited and set most of the corpses on fire, others proceeded to houses and shot indiscriminately at women who were preparing food,” he said.

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On Tuesday, gunmen attacked two villages near the town of Monguno in Borno state.

“The terrorists attacked the twin villages of Mussaram I and Mussaram II in the night,” Mohammed Tahir Monguno, the MP for the area, told Reuters.

“They went there in the night when the villagers were resting after the day’s fasting and assembled them before opening fire on them.”

At least 13,000 people are estimated to have been killed and about 1.5 million displaced during Boko Haram’s six-year fight to create an Islamic caliphate in the north-east of Africa’s top oil-producing nation.

The militants have since mostly resorted to deadly hit-and-run attacks on remote villages and the use of suicide bombers.

Boko Haram controlled an area roughly the size of Belgium at the end of 2014 before a military offensive seized much of the territory in the first few months of this year.

By the time of March’s presidential election, the military claimed it had taken back all but three out of 20 local government areas previously controlled by Boko Haram.

But the last month has seen a resurgence in attacks, many in Maiduguri, the biggest city in north-east Nigeria.

The new president, Muhammadu Buhari, moved the army’s command centre for the campaign against Boko Haram to the Borno state capital after coming to power.
Buhari, who was sworn in as president on 29 May, has held talks with officials from the neighbouring countries Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin to set up a regional force to tackle the insurgents.

The fight against Boko Haram is also expected to be high on the agenda when Buhari travels to Washington to meet the US president, Barack Obama, on 20 July.

Source: theguardian.com