Boko Haram Insurgents Give Borno Community 3-Day Ultimatum To Relocate

Boko Haram insurgents have reportedly given residents of Jakana village along Maiduguri, Damaturu road till Wednesday to relocate or face its wrath.

Boko Haram: Suicide Bombers Kill 16 Near Maiduguri, Borno State, NE Nigeria

Maiduguri (Nigeria) (AFP) - At least 16 people were killed in suicide bomb attacks near a camp for those made homeless by Boko Haram violence in northeast Nigeria, emergency services said on Monday.

Multiple Blasts Rock Maiduguri, Borno State

Multiple explosions rocked the outskirts of Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri early Friday, killing three suicide bombers, the emergency service and police said.

Multiple Blasts Near Maiduguri, Army Blames Test-firing of Weapons

Maiduguri (Nigeria) (AFP) - Multiple explosions were heard Sunday on the outskirts of Maiduguri, a city in northeastern Nigeria that has repeatedly been attacked by Boko Haram jihadists, local residents said.

But the army said the blasts, which caused some panicked residents to flee, were a result of the test-firing of weapons during military exercises in the area.

Two Female Suicide Bombers Kill Scores At Maiduguri Market

Two female suicide bombers today caused massive explosion at a crowded commercial centre of Maiduguri, killing scores and injuring several others, witnesses and security sources said.

Boko Haram 'Seize' Strategic Bama Town in Borno

Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram has seized the key north-eastern town of Bama after fierce fighting with government forces, residents say.

Thousands of civilians have fled the town, along with soldiers, they added.

The military has not yet officially commented on the claim that it has lost control of Bama, the second biggest town in Borno state.

Last month, Boko Haram said it had established an Islamic state in areas it controls in north-eastern Nigeria.

If confirmed, the capture of Bama would be an extremely significant development and would raise concerns that Boko Haram's next target will be Maiduguri, the state capital about 70km (45 miles) away, says BBC Hausa service editor Mansur Liman in the capital, Abuja.

It would be the biggest town under Boko Haram control.

Residents told BBC Hausa that Boko Haram captured Bama after heavy fighting on Sunday and Monday.

The military had initially repelled Boko Haram's assault, but the group returned with reinforcements to seize the town, the residents said.

The militants, who travelled in armoured trucks, first took control of the military barracks, they added.

Soldiers and residents fled on foot, many of them walking all the way to Maiduguri, residents told the BBC.

Several security sources said Boko Haram had over-run much of Bama and there were heavy casualties on both sides, Reuters news agency reports.

About 70 militants had been killed, the Associated Press quoted security sources as saying.

On Monday, the military said on its Twitter account that the air force had been used to "repel and dislodge" Boko Haram from Bama.

The most recent census, in 2006, showed the town had a population of about 270,000.

Source:
BBC

Once Again, Boko Haram Attacks Damboa Village (Bornu State), Scores Feared Dead

Residents of Damboa village said they are still picking piles of corpses after Boko Haram gunmen Friday morning invaded the besieged town, 85km south of Maiduguri, shooting and killing defenceless villagers and setting homes ablaze.

A top security official (names withheld) from Maiduguri confirmed the attack but said no details on extent of damage yet.
Vigilante official, Abbas Gava, told Echoesinn blogger that “the death casualty could be very high because my contacts in Damboa said they are still picking and piling the corpses, but many houses, nearly half of what remains of the several attacked town has been burnt”.
Gava promised to get more details on the number of deaths recorded.
He said the gunmen crept upon the villagers who were about to perform the early dawn prayers.

Since the Sunday of fortnight ago, when Boko Haram gunmen walked over a military base killings dozen of soldiers and four police men in Damboa, Boko Haram gunmen had laid siege along the road leading from Maiduguri to Damboa, and had forced soldiers going to the attacked base for evacuation of its destroyed munitions, to turn back by launching some ambush shooting on them twice. Two more soldiers were reported dead in one of the ambush attack. But the soldiers were able to
return fire from an armoured tanker at a sniper with Rocket Launcher who was firing from atop a tree, while others were shooting from the surrounding bushes, a witness said.

Boko Haram had also cut off access to Damboa from the southern part of the road coming from Biu town, 100km away from Damboa by blowing down a major bridge on the highway at a hamlet called Sabongari last Monday.

Damboa, an agrarian village where Borno state sourced most of its grocery and fruits supply, had suffered several attacks in the past two years, reasons of the newly established 7 Division of the Nigeria Army to establish operational
base called 33 Tank Battalion in Damboa.
But since after the last attack before today’s (18th July, 2014) neither the soldiers nor the police could return back to Damboa. The embattled few villagers were left at the protection of the sticks and Dane guns-carrying youth vigilante called Civilian-JTF.

Courtesy:
African Spotlight

Breaking News: Explosion in Maiduguri Kills at Least 15 People

MAIDUGURI  (AFP) – A huge explosion in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Tuesday killed at least 15 people, an AFP photographer said, in the latest blast to hit the city repeatedly attacked by Boko Haram Islamists.

After the explosion in a truck carrying charcoal at the city’s biggest roundabout during morning rush hour, victims were taken to the State Specialist Hospital, where the photographer saw the bodies of 15 people killed in the blast, while witnesses said the toll could be much higher.

Vanguard Newspaper

Boko Haram Rampage: Frustrated Nigerians Resort to Establishing Own Armies

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Many people in northern Nigeria, frustrated by a five-year insurgency and what they call a
lack of military protection, are ordering rudimentary bulletproof clothing, buying homemade muskets and organizing ragtag militias.
The move toward self protection—born of years of suicide attacks, shooting rampages and mass abductions of girls and boys—underscores what limited
headway the military has made against Boko Haram, the brutal Islamist insurgency whose war against the government has left more than 14,000 people dead in the past three years, according to New York's Council on Foreign Relations.
Deep into the countryside, the black Boko Haram flag flies over a growing sweep of villages, many of them
abandoned.

In April, the group claimed responsibility for kidnapping
more than 200 schoolgirls the night before their final exams, and on Tuesday, local vigilantes said Islamist
militants abducted some 90 more people from northeastern villages. The girls remain missing, despite the presence of U.S. drones, a British spy plane, and Chinese satellites.
Their failure thus far to help rescue the girls has reinforced a belief among ordinary people that they alone can defeat Boko Haram.
So residents here are assembling their own armies. Three closely linked vigilante groups have taken root
here over the past year. They count more than 11,000 members between them. At first, they were equipped with sticks, machetes and table legs. Now they are scaling up, procuring locally made barrel-loaded shotguns cobbled together from car parts and scrap wood. For the first time in recent memory, vendors say there is a shortage of them.

In Maiduguri, Maina Bulama, a 74-year-old bean farmer, stitches thick leather amulets into tank tops customers wear beneath their shirts in the northeastern town. He learned the trade from his father and grandfather, who like him sewed Islamic prayers into the product to curry divine favor. In recent months, customers have arrived in swelling numbers.
"I can't even tell you the number of people I've given these to," said Mr. Bulama.

Officials fret that throwing more arms at the problem will only make it bigger, deepening instability in a country that recently surpassed South Africa as the continent's largest economy.
"This is what we are trying to avoid as much as possible," says Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno, Nigeria's most violent state. In time, he fears, armed militias and vigilante groups could "end up becoming the
Frankenstein monster that will consume us." Nigeria's military spokesman didn't respond to repeated requests to comment. In a statement last year, the military—which has said it is stretched thin policing so many conflicts, criminal movements and rebellions around the country—expressed concern that vigilante groups could be "used to settle scores or witch-hunt perceived enemies."

Kulwa Mesage, a vigilante who bought his musket for roughly $24, says he is saving up for a $175 foreign-made shotgun. "We prefer the pump action," he says.
Nigeria sits along what weapon trackers consider one of the world's busiest highways for arms trafficking, the Sahel. The hardware trafficked here includes homemade pistols, stolen military assault rifles and truck-mounted machine guns likely looted from Libya's inventory after the fall of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

That abundance of weaponry explains how Boko Haram-once a forest-dwelling group armed with curved swords- assembled one of Africa's biggest arsenals in just a few years.
Today, Boko Haram boasts rocket-propelled grenades, night-vision goggles, armored personnel carriers, plus satellite phones—all brandished in their propaganda videos. Nigerian troops say they communicate by cellphones over patchy networks and some say they lack ammunition.

The army has made moves to curb the gun proliferation, especially in Maiduguri. In recent years, troops here have seized unlicensed firearms and detained craftsmen who make them.
But the feeling of insecurity stretches far beyond Nigeria's north. In the grasslands across the middle of the country, a little-noticed ring of cattle thieves has killed more than 500 herdsmen and taken 60,000 cows
in the past 18 months, the country's cattle-breeding association says. Markets in those areas now do brisk business swapping cows for AK-47s, it says.
In the south, gunmen frequently kidnap prominent Nigerians for ransom, prompting village chief Anthony Ijele, among others, to buy his own shotgun. "Guns have been used to stabilize American society and it is that stability that we want in Nigeria," he says.

Ibrahim Mohammad used to manufacture single-barrel muskets from steering columns and chunks of wood. Then soldiers took him to jail for 30 days, the same crowded, dark prison where they hold Boko Haram suspects. Since his release, he says he has limited his work to repairing weapons: "One has to be very careful." Out in the countryside, Boko Haram has delivered an even-more-brutal sort of gun control: It has decapitated gunsmiths in the rifle-making village of Damboa. The treasurer of a gunsmith's guild, Mustapha Kabuke, understood that as Boko Haram's attempt to send a stop-work message.
But Mr. Kabuke is 90 and has been making guns for eight decades. He simply moved his guild to a nearby
village. On a recent day, his five apprentices were busy assembling their latest pair of muskets. Business has been nonstop since vigilantes starting sprouting up. The old man keeps prices low—$50 a musket—"so that every person will have a gun to defend himself."

The Wall Street Journal

Boko Haram Attacks Military Checkpoint in Bornu, Kills 12 Soldiers, Loses 25 Members

Suspected Boko Haram militants yesterday attacked a military checkpoint Bulamburin village in Borno State killing at least 12 soldiers and losing 25 of their members in a fierce exchange of gunfire.

Bulamburin village, the scene of the deadly encounter, is about 50 kilometers south of Dambua in the southern part of the violence-plagued state.

A military source, who survived the siege, disclosed that the armed men who attacked the military contingent arrived in the village on motorcycles and in several sports utility vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft weapons.

Speaking to reporters in Maiduguri, the source said 12 soldiers had lost their lives, but that the military inflicted heavier casualties on the members of the dreaded Islamist group.

“Some soldiers escaped with bullet wounds,” said the source. He added, “I was at the checkpoint when the terrorists came. We fired at them and tried our best, but they had advantage over us. They had better weapons and we had AK-47 rifles that were not fully loaded. When we realized that they had taken over the place, some of us escaped to Maiduguri and other places, but many could not make it.”

Boko Haram terrorists have recently intensified their violent activities in the southern part of Borno State where hundreds of people have been killed, numerous homes razed, and many people kidnapped.

Courtesy:
Sahara Reporters

Nigerian Army To Investigate Soldiers Mutiny In Maiduguri

The Nigerian Army says it will investigate the mutiny on Wednesday in Maiduguri by soldiers attached to the newly created 7th battalion of the Nigerian Army.
A statement by spokesman Major General Chris Olukolade said the inquiry will be on “the circumstances surrounding the conduct of soldiers who fired some shots while the General Officer Commanding was addressing troops in Maimalari cantonment Maiduguri.”

According to the Defence spokesman, Wednesday’s incident occurred when the corpses of four soldiers who died in an ambush while returning from patrol duties in Chibok were being conveyed to the morgue.  He however assured that there is currently calm in the cantonment and normal operations continuing.

Recall that some soldiers seconded to the 7th Division, which was established only two months ago for the war against Boko Haram, fired shots into the air at the barracks as they were being addressed by Major General Ahmed Mohammed, their commanding officer who was appointed in February. 

Soldiers are said to be complaining about management issues relating to the implementation of the state of emergency.  Among the issues, they say their commanders have neither provided the appropriate equipment to combat the better-armed Boko Haram militants nor devised a troop-rotation system.

Source:
SR