Schoolgirl kidnappers blamed for deadly attack on Nigerian town
Print Edition
ISLAMIC militants killed “many” people in an attack on a border town in Nigeria’s remote northeast, a state government official said yesterday.
Shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the attack on Monday night on Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, Borno state information commissioner Mohammed Bulama said.
As many as 300 people were killed in the attack, according to local newspapers. The militants sprayed gunfire into crowds of people at a busy market that is open at night when temperatures cool in the semi-desert region, reported ThisDay newspaper.
Senator Ahmed Zannah said the attack lasted about 12 hours. The insurgents set homes ablaze and gunned down residents who tried to escape from the flames.
Zannah blamed fighters of Nigeria’s homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network that has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 276 teenage girls and is threatening to sell them into slavery.
Nigerian police yesterday offered a US$300,000 reward for information leading to the rescue of the abducted schoolgirls.
The mass kidnapping last month by Boko Haram, which is fighting for an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, triggered an international outcry and protests in Nigeria.
Public anger mounted after reports of another eight girls seized from the same remote northeastern area by suspected members of the group.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened to sell the girls abducted on April 14 from a secondary school in the village of Chibok “on the market.”
The United States has offered to send a team to Nigeria to help the search efforts.
The kidnappings, and other attacks by Boko Haram, have overshadowed Nigeria’s hosting of the World Economic Forum, which was due to start last night. Nigerian officials had hoped the event would draw attention to the potential of Africa’s biggest economy as an investment destination.
Last month’s kidnapping occurred on the day a bomb blast, also claimed by Boko Haram, killed 75 people on the outskirts of Abuja, the first attack on the capital in two years. Another bomb in roughly the same place killed 19 people last week.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan welcomed a US offer to send a team to Nigeria to support the government’s efforts to find the girls.
President Barack Obama told ABC the kidnappings “may be the event that helps to mobilize the entire international community to finally do something against this horrendous organization that’s perpetrated such a terrible crime.”
Britain has also offered to help, but Foreign Minister William Hague told Sky News that would be “difficult because this is primarily a matter for Nigeria.”
Boko Haram’s five-year-old Islamic uprising has claimed the lives of thousands of Muslims and Christians. More than 1,500 people have died in their attacks so far this year.
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