At least 81 people have been killed and others are missing following a new jihadist attack in northeastern Nigeria, according to local authorities. According to police in Yobe state, about 150 suspected members of the Boko Haram group, armed with firearms and grenades, attacked the village of Mafa on motorcycles on 1Ahem September around 4pm “We believe that this is a reprisal for the murder of two Boko Haram terrorists by self-defense groups of the people”police spokesman Abdulkarim Dungus told Agence France Presse.
The jihadists have repeatedly accused the inhabitants of Mafa of helping the army in its operations against Boko Haram. The attackers “They set fire to the houses, which were mostly thatched dwellings, and burned alive those hiding inside”said an administrative official from the local government of Tarmuwa, where Mafa is located, who asked to remain anonymous, after speaking to a Mafa resident who managed to escape the attack.
According to Bulama Jalaluddeen, spokesman for the Tarmuwa local government chairman, 34 bodies were buried in Babban Gida, the local government headquarters of the territory, and another thirty are still in Mafa: “Fifteen bodies had already been buried by their relatives when soldiers arrived in Mafa to evacuate them. And an undetermined number of victims from nearby villages who were caught in the attack were taken and buried by their relatives before the soldiers arrived.”
Police have not given any assessment at this time. But they believe that Boko Haram killed “a lot of people and they burned many shops and houses” during this attack.
Rural communities looted and extorted
Villages in Yobe state, made up mainly of farmers and herders, are often looted or extorted by jihadists from Boko Haram and its rival faction, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP). In recent years, the jihadists have stepped up their attacks in the north of the country against farmers, loggers, herders and fishermen, whom they accuse of informing the army and local militias fighting them.
In late October 2023, police, with the help of villagers, killed several jihadists near the village of Kayayya, after residents received several threats. In retaliation, jihadists killed 37 people in two days in two villages in Yobe State, including 20 who were returning from the funerals of those killed the previous day.
The jihadist insurgency that has lasted more than fourteen years in the north of the country has already left more than 40,000 dead and more than 2 million displaced. Jihadist fighters from Boko Haram and Iswap have lost ground in northeastern Nigeria over the years, but continue to attack rural communities. In addition to the jihadist insurgency, Africa’s most populous country, with more than 220 million inhabitants, also faces powerful criminal gangs, inter-communal fighting and separatist tensions.
