185 People Feared Dead In Military Onslaught In Borno

Intense fighting between military officers and suspected Boko Haram insurgents in Borno state is reported to have killed almost 200 civilians and destroyed 2,000 homes.

Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy gunfire bombarded the remote town of Baga, near the border with Chad for hours on Friday evening, government and military officials say.

Residents of Baga fled into the bush and only returned on Sunday afternoon to find much of the town destroyed and human and animal corpses strewn through the streets.

Authorities had found and buried at least 185 bodies as of Sunday afternoon, said Lawan Kole, a local government official in Baga.

Officials could not offer a breakdown of civilian casualties versus those of soldiers and extremist fighters. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town, residents said.

Those killed were buried as soon as possible, following local Muslim tradition.

Brigadier General Austin Edokpaye, also on the visit, did not dispute the casualty figures.

Edokpaye said Boko Haram extremists used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault, which began after soldiers, surrounded a mosque they believed housed members of the radical Islamic extremist network Boko Haram. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer, the general said.

Edokpaye said extremists used civilians as human shields during the fighting — implying that soldiers opened fire in neighbourhoods where they knew civilians lived.

“When we reinforced and returned to the scene the terrorists came out with heavy firepower, including (rocket-propelled grenades), which usually has a conflagration effect,” the general said.

One local journalist said this marked a significant escalation in the insurgency in the area, with the militants using heavier weapons than in previous attacks.

Residents said most of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in blazes that had destroyed much of the town.

One resident, Bashir Isa, told Associated Press that “everyone has been in the bush since Friday night; we started returning to town because the governor came.

“To get food to eat in the town now is a problem because even the markets are burnt. We are still picking corpses of women and children in the bush and creeks.”