Fresh Boko Haram raids kill many in Adamawa
Scores of people have been killed and many others forced to
flee to the mountains following a renewed series of Boko Haram raids in Michika
area in northeastern Adamawa state, a lawmaker and a relief agency official
said Tuesday.
The reported attacks by the Islamists targeted the Michika,
where bodies reportedly littered the streets in several villages, reports AFP.
The bloodshed in northeast Nigeria has reached unprecedented
levels in recent weeks, raising questions about security for general elections
set for February 14.
The head of a European Union election monitoring mission,
Santiago Fisas, said staff deployed to observe polling in Africa's most
populous country would not even attempt to travel to the northeast.
Separately, police in the northeastern town of Potiskum said
they had arrested a bomb-maker linked to several recent Boko Haram suicide
attacks -- a welcome development for Nigeria's security services which have
struggled to protect civilians.
Adamu Kamale, who represents the Michika district in the
Adamawa state government, also in the northeast, said Boko Haram gunmen had
been going "door-to-door, killing people, including the old" for the
past two weeks.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the latest alleged
atrocities.
The insurgents, who are blamed for more than 13,000 deaths
since 2009, have been in control of Michika for roughly five months.
Women and children had been abducted and countless homes
destroyed, according to Kamale, who said roughly 70 percent of the population
had fled their homes.
Many had escaped to Adamawa's capital Yola, where hundreds
of thousands have previously sought refuge, while others have been hiding in
the mountain range that borders Cameroon.
"Dead bodies litter villages... The attackers slaughter
people like animals," he said.
In other areas under Boko Haram's control, however, the
attacks had abated and Kamale struggled to understand that latest unrest.
"To us, it has gone beyond insurgency. Something very
strange is taking place in Michika," he said.
Mohammed Kanar, northeast coordinator for the National
Emergency Management Agency, confirmed the raids in Michika, without discussing
details of the violence.
"People are trapped in the mountains but they are
inaccessible," he told AFP. "The security situation is a
challenge."
The spike in bloodshed comes less than three weeks before an
election in which President Goodluck Jonathan faces a tough challenge from
former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari.
The EU on Tuesday said it would deploy 90 observers across
the country for the polls, excluding the northeast.
"The present situation (does not) allow us to go to the
northeast," Fisas, the head of the mission, told reporters.
Nigerian election officials have already conceded that
voting will be impossible in much of the region, where Boko Haram controls
large swatches of territory, especially in its historic stronghold of Borno
state.
Police said an explosives manufacturer, who was identified
only as Ba'na and in his mid-thirties, was picked up after weeks of
surveillance in Potiskum, the commercial capital of Yobe state.
The area has been hit by a wave of bombings in recent
months, including a suicide attack on a secondary school in November 10 in
which 58 people were killed.
On January 18, at least four people died in an attack on a
bus station, while the previous week two women wearing suicide vests killed six
people at a market and two died in a car bombing outside a police station.
Nine alleged accomplices were also arrested, according to
one senior police officer, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to
speak to the media.
Nigeria's security services have boasted about several high
profile Boko Haram-related arrests, but there is little evidence that the
detentions have helped reduce the violence.
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