Military hunts Boko Haram after daring barracks attack

KANO – Nigeria’s military has surrounded a
village in the northeast to flush out Islamist
rebels who fled there after reportedly
snatching soldiers’ wives and children during
a daring attack on an army barracks nearby,
witnesses told AFP Saturday.
Suspected Boko Haram fighters stormed the
barracks in the town of Bama early on Friday,
spraying it with bullets before torching the
compound.

Several Bama residents told AFP the
insurgents also abducted several of the
soldiers’ wives and children during the attack.
Asked about those details, northeastern
military spokesman Mohammed Dole refered
AFP to Nigeria’s defence headquarters.

Defence spokesman Chris Olukolade could not
be reached for comment.
Bama residents said the Boko Haram gunmen
fled to the nearby village of Abbaram after the
attack, where the military sent hundreds of
troops on Saturday.
“The soldiers have besieged the village and
more troops are deploying in hundreds,” said
Ibrahim Idris.

“Nothing is happening yet but from the huge
number of troops deploying and the large
number of Boko Haram in the village one can
imagine what may happen”.
Karim Bunu, who also lives in Bama, described
Abbaram as a village of some 250 people.

“We are afraid of what will happen to the
people of Abbaram because whichever way
one looks at it, they are facing a serious
security threat,” he told AFP.
A third resident, who requested anonymity,
said the Islamists were holding in Abbaram
the “women and children of soldiers,” who had
been kidnapped during the Friday attack, in an
account supported by both Idris and Bunu.

In November, Human Rights Watch reported
that Boko Haram has increasingly used
kidnappings as a tactic, abducting scores of
women and children this year.
After staging an attack on the military, the
insurgents typically flee to far away camps to
evade pursuing troops, but their escape was
slowed on Friday by fighter jets which dropped
bombs on the major routes leading out of
Bama, according to the military and
witnesses.

“I counted 18 burnt all-terrain vans belonging
to the Boko Haram gunmen pulverised by
military jets,” said the unnamed resident, who
identified himself as a member of a military-
backed vigilante force which has formed in the
northeast to fight the insurgents.
Air force jets continued to fly over the region
on Saturday, residents said.

The Bama attack was the second major
Islamist assault on the army this month,
casting further doubt on official claims that
the rebels have been weakened by a seven-
month-old military offensive in the northeast.
(AFP)