Gwoza Under Siege: Boko Haram Kills 300, Wipes Out 3 Villages

No fewer than 300 villagers were reportedly killed in three communities around Gwoza local government area of Borno State on Monday as gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram but fully kitted in military fatigue uniform attacked them, eyewitnesses and security operatives said.

A few villagers in Danjara, Agapalwa and Antagara who managed to escape the attack are currently taking refuge in the rocky Gwoza hills, while others mostly women and children who were spared by the attackers have found their way into Cameroonian territory.

A state lawmaker representing the region, Peter Biye, told the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that “they (Boko Haram) opened fire on villagers and burned houses and churches to the ground”. Dozens of people were killed in each attack, he said, but he could not give precise figures.

Andrew Tada, an indigene of Attagara who lives in Maiduguri, the state capital, told the BBC that he lost two cousins in the attack, noting that residents had told him they were preparing to bury 45 people from that village alone.

“It is very sad and the villages are deserted now; we are just asking government to give us security to go there tomorrow (today) to evacuate the corpses for burial,” Tada said.

Impeccable sources who saw it all told LEADERSHIP that the gunmen that attacked the villages pretended to be soldiers who had come to protect them from further attacks, but when the fake soldiers managed to gather all the villagers at the centre of the village in Antagara, they opened fire on them, killing hundreds and injuring several others....

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