Residents of a Nigerian town attacked by Boko Haram have criticised security forces for failing to protect them despite warnings that the Islamic militants were nearby.
At least 50 bodies have been recovered, many horribly burned, in Gamboru.
The attack on the town, in remote northeastern Nigeria near the border with Cameroon, is part of the Islamic militants’ relentless campaign of terror at a time when world attention is focused on the 276 teenage girls who are missing after being kidnapped from their boarding school by the extremists. The students are believed to be held by Boko Haram in the vast Sambisa Forest in northeastern Nigeria.
The death toll from Monday afternoon’s attack in Gamboru was initially reported by a senator to be as many as 300, but a security official said it is more likely to be about 100. Some Gamboru residents said bodies were recovered from the debris of burned shops around the town’s main market, which was the focus of the attack.
The bodies were found after the market reopened yesterday as health workers, volunteers and traders searched for missing people, said Gamboru resident Abuwar Masta. He said most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition. Some of the victims were traders from Chad and Cameroon, he added.
“It seems they hid in the shops in order not [to] be killed while fleeing,” Mr Masta said. “Unfortunately, several explosives were thrown into the market.”
Mr Masta and other traders said some villagers had warned the security forces of an impending attack after insurgents were seen camping in the bush near Gamboru.
The kidnapping of the schoolgirls on April 15th in the town of Chibok have sparked accusations that the Nigerian government is not doing enough to stop the militants.
Islamic law
Boko Haram have killed more than 1,500 people so far this year as part of their campaign to impose Islamic law on Africa's most populous nation, which has 170 million people equally divided between Christian and Muslim.
Outrage over the missing girls and the government’s failure to rescue them brought angry Nigerian protesters into the streets this week, an embarrassment for the government of president Goodluck Jonathan which had hoped to showcase the country’s emergence as Africa’s largest economy as it hosted the Africa meeting of the World Economic Forum, the continent’s version of Davos.
That meeting is continuing in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, which also has been the scene recently of two bomb blasts blamed on Boko Haram.
Nigeria’s military said yesterday that the armed forces are “focused on the task of rescuing the abducted girls and that the war on Boko Haram ”will be effectively prosecuted”.
Also yesterday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, said acts such as the mass abduction of girls "shock the conscience of humanity" and could constitute crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of The Hague-based court. "No stone should be left unturned to bring those responsible for such atrocious acts to justice either in Nigeria or at the ICC," she said .
The homegrown terror group was largely contained to the northern part of Nigeria before expanding its reach with the help of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist network’s affiliate in West Africa, which trained Boko Haram fighters in its camps in southern Somalia, beginning in 2010.
Although Boko Haram has killed thousands of people, it was the group’s mass abduction of schoolgirls that galvanised global attention and offers of help.
The US is sending personnel and equipment to help Nigerian security forces, which the Pentagon said yesterday will include communications, logistics and intelligence planning.
Britain and China said Nigeria had accepted their offers of help, and France said it was sending in a “specialised team” search for the girls. – (PA)