Boko Haram fighters have stormed a village in Northeast Nigeria killing two people as the military continues to maintain that the insurgents had been defeated.
The was revealed on Monday by a local resident and a security source saying the attack happened on Sunday evening at Alau-Kofa village, some 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) from the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.
“Boko Haram came to our village last night at about 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) firing guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades),” Bulama Bukar, who lives in Alau-Kofa, told AFP.
“Two people were burnt alive and the whole village was burnt, along with our food.”
Bukar, whose father was shot in the leg during the attack, said the jihadists “specifically came to steal our cattle” but were forced to abandon the herds when soldiers arrived.
“Last Wednesday they attacked the village, killed three people and took away 50 cattle. And now they came back,” he added.
A security source in Maiduguri, who asked not to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed Bukar’s account.
“It is part of the fightback strategy by the terrorists, who are facing mounting pressure from the military,” he said.
The Nigeria’s military had last week declared that it had cleared the Sambisa Forest in Borno state of Boko Haram fighters as the theatre commander Major General Nicholas Rogers was reported as saying on Monday that the Islamic State Group affiliate was “completely defeated”.
But the security source warned against premature triumphalism, despite recent successes declaring that “saying they have been completely defeated is pushing it too far,” he said.
“They have indeed been pushed out of Sambisa. They have relocated their camps to Dubur and Yuwe on the rear fringes of Sambisa.”
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