Boko Haram Beheads Seven Civilians in Northern Nigeria

Boko Haram Beheads Seven Civilians in Northern Nigeria

The radical Islamist faction of Boko Haram killed at least seven people in the city of Ngambu in the Borno state of northeast Nigeria. Local sources said that on Monday, they discovered the bodies of seven brutally decapitated people.

The gunmen “slit their (victims) throats just the way people slaughter goats,” said resident Musa Abor.

The Nigerian government has not yet released the identity of the victims.

Initially, the Boko Haram Islamists focused their aggressions mainly on resisting security forces, but recently they have increasingly targeted local civilians accused of “collaboration” with the military, as well as voluntary civilian militias.

The attacks took place while the people were celebrating the important Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, a holiday commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael.

Officials believe that more than two dozen towns and villages in the northeast are under Boko Haram control, though the Nigerian military has vowed to retake all lost ground.

The total of those killed as a result of the Boko Haram aggression in northeastern Nigeria is now at least 11,000, according to a new report by the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday morning, Boko Haram claimed eight other victims in neighboring Cameroon, separated from Nigeria by a long, porous border. A rocket launched allegedly by Boko Haram from the Nigerian city of Banki fell on the town of Amchide, in the far north of Cameroon, killing at least eight civilians and leaving an unknown number of casualties.

The bomb hit a busy road while people were out shopping. In Amchide, the population is forming vigilante groups to fend off increasingly frequent raids of the Nigerian fighters, who in recent weeks have taken control of several towns and villages in the neighboring states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa.

In Niamey Tuesday, a summit of the Lake Chad Basin Commission is scheduled to reinforce the fight against Boko Haram. The summit is to be preceded by a meeting of the defense ministers of Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Benin.

The South-South and South-East chairman of Nigeria’s Northern Forum, Alhaji Musa Saidu, has called on the members of the Boko Haram sect to lay down their arms and embrace peace.

“I want to use this season to ask the Boko Haram insurgents to reflect on Islam as a religion and understand its tenets. Islam is a peaceful religion devoid of violence. Islam abhors violence; I want them to note this and stop the present hostility in the North,” he said.

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