Thirty people have been killed in northeastern Nigeria in a jihadist attack in retaliation for a military strike, paramilitary leaders said on Monday.
The bomber struck shortly after noon in the village of Moudou in Borno state, near the border with Chad, by Islamic State (IS) jihadists in West Africa, according to the same source.
It was not known until yesterday due to the poor quality of communications in the area. The jihadists have destroyed much of the telecommunications infrastructure.
The 30 victims were “scrap metal traders in the area looking for charred cars”, which is “a lot in the villages in northern Borno due to terrorist attacks”, Babakura Kolo, a senior paramilitary leader, told the at the French Agency.
The victims had walked there from displaced camps in the city of Ran, 80 kilometers from there.
According to the leader of another paramilitary group, Omar Ari, the jihadists accused the victims of gathering information about their positions in the area in order to give it to the army.
The 30 men “had the misfortune to be in the area while the terrorists were mourning the death of two of their commanders, who were killed in a military operation,” Ari explained.
In recent weeks, the Nigerian military has launched ground and air strikes against IKDA and rival Boko Haram, killing several of its leaders.
IKDA was born when Boko Haram disintegrated in 2016. It gradually became the strongest jihadist organization in the region.
Both organizations are increasingly targeting civilians, especially loggers, farmers and stockbreeders, who accuse them of spying.
Violence by jihadist groups and military operations to suppress Nigeria since 2009 has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people and forced 2.2 million people to flee their homes, according to UN estimates.
Most of the displaced live in camps and depend on food aid provided by humanitarian organizations. Many are forced to cut down trees in arid areas to have logs for heating, or to collect scrap metal that they sell to buy food.
Jihadist activity has spread from Nigeria to neighboring countries – Niger, Chad and Cameroon. To counter them, the armies of the four countries, as well as Benin, reactivated in 2015 the so-called Joint Multinational Force (NMP), which they had created in 1994 but has remained virtually inactive ever since.
SOURCE: AMPE
Source: Capital
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