This report details a fresh Boko Haram assault in Mammanti village, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, where farmers were attacked while working in their fields.
Local residents told AFP that the gunmen struck on Monday, firing on people in the open and leaving nine dead. Three others were injured in the same raid.
Village chief Muhammad Mammanti said the community later recovered the bodies of the dead. He also said the attackers took away 12 people, including women, and used machetes on three residents who tried to resist being taken.
Usman Kaka, a farmer who escaped, said the attackers arrived on bicycles in the afternoon. He said they opened fire as people ran for safety and that the community later found nine people killed and three others with machete wounds to the head after refusing to go with the gunmen.
The Mammanti community had already been hit the previous Wednesday, when Boko Haram fighters killed one person, burned the village and stole hundreds of cattle. The repeated attacks forced residents to move to Maiduguri, the state capital, and commute daily to their farms.
Boko Haram has increasingly targeted farmers and loggers in recent years, accusing them of passing information to the military. Despite government claims that the group is close to defeat, it has continued to launch major attacks on military and civilian targets.
Since the insurgency began in 2009, more than 27,000 people have been killed in Nigeria’s remote northeast and about 1.8 million remain homeless.
