Soldiers Kill Over 400 Boko Haram Terrorists In Borno Villages

At least 400 members of the Boko Haram terrorist group were killed in the last three days by soldiers during separate shootouts in different parts of Borno State, security sources said.

LEADERSHIP had on Tuesday night broken the story that Boko Haram terrorists were staging yet another attack, days after soldiers had successfully repelled their attack on Konduga village where over 250 of them were killed.

The insurgents who had suffered several defeats in the hands of soldiers were said to have recorded another bad outing on Tuesday when the soldiers stationed there effectively repelled them by killing yet scores more of them.

The terrorists who seemed confused, given the repeated failed attempts to march over Konduga in order to invade Maiduguri, had also met another disastrous end at Ngamdu village of Kaga local government area, about 100km from Maiduguri, when they attempted to take over the Kano-Maiduguri highway in the morning of Wednesday.

A civilian JTF official, Bashir Abbas, who usually follows the deployed troops of Nigerian soldiers during such attack, confirmed to LEADERSHIP in Maiduguri that the Konduga attack, just like the previous one that took place on Friday, was forewarned.

“The Tuesday night attack was expected and the soldiers really mobilised for an ambush attack on the Boko Haram members who divided themselves in three groups,” said Bashir. “They tactically sent the first group to face the military as they usually do, but, unknown to them, the soldiers had also strategically taken cover and were waiting for them. On getting to the middle of the town, the military opened fire on them, killing over 100 of them; they were able to recover one armoured personnel carrier, three vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft, several motorcycles and ammunition.”

Bashir added that “after the military had successfully crushed the first group, the second group appeared, followed by the third group but they were all crushed by the military assisted by our members”.

“On Wednesday morning, the gunmen mobilised some of their members from around Yobe axis with the intention of crossing over to Konduga but were intercepted by soldiers who acted on a tip-off, confronted them with yet another ambush attack that got about 150 of them killed in Ngamdu village.”

At Ngamdu, the military also recovered one Shell Car armoured tank, several Hilux vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft and many other ammunition from the Boko Haram sect. He added such successful operations had been recorded in the last nine days that caused many of the insurgents to die.

Some of the residents of Konduga who managed to arrive in Maiduguri were full of praises for the soldiers who, they said, showed rare gallantry.

A resident of the area said that the insurgents again attempted to attack Konduga from two directions with over 500 fighters while the military fought and defended the town, killing uncountable number of the insurgents.

Malam Abu’ar Yale, a local farmer, said during the second attack on Konduga, “the terrorists were successfully repelled by the troops of the Nigerian Army [who] killed scores of them, recovered armored tanker, vehicles, motorcycles, among others”.

A driver bus, Mallam Isa Garba, told journalists that on their way from Damaturu to Maiduguri yesterday in the morning, they were stopped by the military and asked to make U-turn back to Damaturu because the road was being attacked.

“But when we were later allowed to proceed with our journey to Maiduguri, we saw several corpses – up to about 100 — lying all over the sides of the road.”

An official of the State Security Service (SSS) in Borno, who spoke to LEADERSHIP but begged not to be quoted, confirmed the report even as he disclosed that the insurgents had returned to Konduga in the evening of yesterday in their untiring plot to take over the town. The attack that started about 6pm was ongoing at the time of filing this report.

  - Leadership Newspaper