Nigerian Civil War Megathread

[jimmy olsen]

All these refugees running around will hardly help with the Ebola situation.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/boko-haram-nigeria-raid-bama-town

Boko Haram kills scores in raid on Nigerian town
Islamist insurgents seize swaths of north-eastern town of Bama, killing scores and displacing thousands in overnight raid

    Reuters in Maiduguri
    The Guardian, Tuesday 2 September 2014 13.14 BST   

Boko Haram insurgents have overrun swaths of a north-eastern Nigerian town after hours of fighting killed scores of residents and displaced thousands, according to security sources.

The Islamists launched an attack on Bama, 45 miles (70km) from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, on Monday. They were initially repelled but returned in greater numbers overnight, the sources and witnesses said.

Witnesses said there were heavy casualties on both sides. One security source said up to 5,000 people had fled the town.

Nigeria's defence spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a bungled air strike, several Nigerian troops were killed at the Bama armoury by a fighter jet targeting the insurgents, according to a soldier on the ground.

Two months after militants in Iraq and Syria declared the area they seized an Islamic caliphate, Boko Haram has also for the first time explicitly laid claim to territory it says it controls in north-east Nigeria.

Fighters captured the remote farming town of Gwoza, along the Cameroon border, during fighting last month. The group's leader, Abubakar Shekau, declared Gwoza a Muslim territory that would be ruled by strict Islamic law.

Shekau's forces have killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009 to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in Nigeria.

"When we started hearing gunshots, everybody was confused. There was firing from different directions. We just ran to the outskirts of town," Bukar Auwalu, a trader who fled with his wife, three children and brother, said. "There were military helicopters and a fighter jet. We slept in the bush on the outskirts of town."

Owing to Bama's proximity to Maiduguri, a metropolis that is also home to a large army base, security officials fear there is little to keep Boko Haram from gaining access to a key city that was also the birthplace of the movement.

Boko Haram attracted international ire in July when its fighters kidnapped more than 200 girls from a school in the north-eastern village of Chibok. The majority of the abductees remain in captivity.

The apparent inability of the military to protect civilians, or prevent the militants' constant raids, has triggered much criticism of President Goodluck Jonathan's administration, although it argues counter-insurgency is something new the government still has to learn how to fight.

A soldier involved in the Bama clashes, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the insurgents had targeted the armoury with heavy weapons including tanks.

As troops tried to repel the attack, they called in air reinforcements. But by the time the fighter jet arrived, they had mostly lost the battle for this location. The jet then bombed the area but accidentally killed everyone there – both Nigerian troops and insurgents – the soldier said. "The situation is bad. We lost so many of our men," he added.

A local farmer, Ibrahim Malu, said hundreds of residents had fled the town. He said he had visited his farm before morning prayers when gunfire and explosions erupted. He ran home, but by the time he got there his wife and children had fled. "I still don't know where they could be," he said. "Two soldiers fled with me. One of them didn't even have shoes."

[jimmy olsen]

Reaĺly escalating over there

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/boko-haram-may-have-killed-thousands-attack-say-experts-n283011

Boko Haram May Have Killed Thousands in Attack, Say Experts
COLLAPSE STORY
BY ROBERT WINDREM AND ALEXANDER SMITH
Terror experts and U.S. officials say a Boko Haram assault this week on a small city on the northern border of Nigeria may have killed as many as 2,000 civilians.

Many survivors fled into the nearby waters of Lake Chad, where some drowned and where others remain marooned on small islands, menaced by hippos, said a local government official.

advertisement

District leader Musa Alhaji Bukar told the BBC 2,000 residents from Baga and 16 other towns had been killed by the radical Islamist terror group, and that Baga was now "virtually nonexistent," which would make the massacre among the most deadly terror attacks in history.

In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Ahmed Zanna, a local senator, said the militants razed Baga and the other communities. "These towns are just gone, burned down," he told NBC News via telephone. "The whole area is covered in bodies."

Zanna said that more than 2,000 people were unaccounted for, and residents who fled the towns reported the killing had been going on since Boko Haram overran a nearby military base Saturday.

American experts say such reports are credible and that officials from Nigeria's central government, who have put the body count in the hundreds, are prone to underestimating death tolls.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said the tally of 2,000 deaths "may not be that far off."

John Campbell, a former ambassador to Nigeria who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs, also agreed that the estimate of 2,000 was "not unreasonable," given the "magnitude" of the attack.

"We have to go by previous pattern and experience," said Campbell. J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council Africa Center, also told NBC News he believed the number was "credible."

All three, however, cautioned that getting an accurate death total was nearly impossible.

The attacks, a coordinated assault on the city and nearby towns, were brutal even for a terror group with a history of mass killings. According to the U.S. counterterrorism official, Boko Haram militants went door-to-door killing families, then strategically placed improvised explosive devices in the streets to funnel survivors into areas where firing squads were pre-positioned. "They were mowed down" by automatic weapons fire, the official said.

The villages were then set on fire, and militants moved on to other areas to repeat the process, officials told the BBC.

Those who survived the deadly gauntlet tried to take refuge in Lake Chad, huddling on islands near the shallow lake's marshy shore.


Who Are Nigeria's Boko Haram?NBCNEWS.COM


advertisement

"These are not stable islands, more like sand bars," explained Pham. "The topography, with the marshes and hippos, gives you a flavor of the misery those who've escaped are facing."

Wednesday's attack on Baga came four days after Boko attacked a Nigerian military base near Baga. Ironically, Baga was supposed to be the main base for joint operations against the terrorist group, the centerpiece of a French-sponsored alliance of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad. It was overrun in a day. Nigeria troops, the only ones on hand, once again abandoned their post -- leaving the city and villages open to attack.

Experts said Boko Haram, like ISIS in Syria and Iraq, is trying to amass territory. Boko Haram has already declared a caliphate 100 miles south of Baga in Gwoza, and may be trying to expand its geographic reach beyond Nigeria's borders.

"They're clearing out people, getting them flexibility and a broader space to operate in," said the U.S. counterterrorism official.

Pham said that Boko Haram has treated civilians in the far north more cruelly than those near Gwoza. The violence in the north, said Pham, is meant "to create havoc to meet their military goals."

Campbell said that Boko Haram now controls all the border crossings in the area between Nigeria and its neighbors, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Only last week, Campbell noted, Boko Haram leader Abubakr Shekhau released a video in which he called for attacks in Cameroon, which like Nigeria is run by a Christian government but has a substantial Muslim population.

In addition, the officials and experts agreed the attacks give Boko Haram a strategic advantage should they want to gain control of Maiduguri, a city of one million in the northeast corner of Nigeria, and the city where Boko Haram was born. Campbell said that he doesn't believe that Boko Haram could overrun Maiduguri, but suggests they could control it -- with sleeper cells already inside the city, some disguised as refugees from nearby fighting.

"When you suggest that Maiduguri is the target, understand this: Boko Haram is already in Maiduguri, with reports of black flags flying over abandoned government buildings," said Campbell, referring to the black and white radical Islamist banner.

London-based human rights group Amnesty International said the massacre could be the "deadliest act" ever perpetrated by Boko Haram.

"If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground ... are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram's ongoing onslaught against the civilian population," said Amnesty's Nigeria researcher Daniel Eyre in an emailed statement. "The attack on Baga and surrounding towns looks as if it could be Boko Haram's deadliest act in a catalogue of increasingly heinous attacks carried out by the group."

[11B4V]

Are these people back at it again.

[Ed Anger]

Are these people back at it again.

Michelle Obama's hashtags didn't work? Shocking.

[mongers]

Are these people back at it again.

They never stopped, just got better at massacring civilians in new and more efficient ways. 

I should point out they have nothing to do with some others committing atrocities in the rest of the world and they just out of the blue, spontaneously decided to slaughter people for no particular reason at all.*




* does this do enough to cover myself with the Languish touchy-feely brigade?

[CountDeMoney]

Are these people back at it again.

"These people"?  Is that like "those people"?

[Eddie Teach]

[11B4V]

Are these people back at it again.

"These people"?  Is that like "those people"?

"Those" people would sound too racist.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I'm sure the usual pundits will come along and claim that the Boko Haram atrocities have nothing to do with islam...

[Lettow77]

 That sort of claim has more weight than usual here. Africa gonna do what it do with or without the teachings of the good Arabian masters.

[Syt]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30761963

Nigeria: 'Girl bomber' kills 19 people in Maiduguri market

At least 19 people have been killed and several injured by a bomb strapped to a girl reported to be aged about 10 in north-eastern Nigeria, police say.

The bomb exploded in a market in the city of Maiduguri, in Borno state.

"The explosive devices were wrapped around her body," a police source told Reuters.

No group has said it carried out the attack. The market is reported to have been targeted twice in a week by female bombers late last year.

Correspondents say that all the signs point to the militant Islamist Boko Haram group.

They have been fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in the north-eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which have borne the worst violence in their five year insurgency.

Borno State police spokesman Gideon Jubrin said that the girl bomber let off an improvised explosive device near the area of the Maiduguri market where chickens were sold.

The BBC's Abdulahi Kaura in Lagos says that this will not be the first suicide bombing involving young girls, part of a new militant strategy intended to capitalise on the fact that people in the Muslim-dominated north are less suspicious of women.

In other violence reported on Saturday a vehicle in Yobe state exploded at a checkpoint near a police station, killing at least two people.

The blast follows heavy fighting in the Yobe state capital Damaturu on Friday night, with buildings destroyed and civilian casualties reported.

Hundreds of people were killed on Wednesday in an assault by Boko Haram on the town of Baga, following on their seizure of a key military base there on 3 January,

Scores of bodies from that attack - described by Amnesty International as possibly the "deadliest massacre" in the history of Boko Haram - are reported to remain strewn in the bush.

District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims in the Baga attack were children, women or elderly people who were not able to escape when insurgents forced their way into the town by firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.

Boko Haram has taken control of many towns and villages in north-eastern Nigeria over the past year.

The conflict has displaced at least 1.5 million people, while more than 2,000 were killed last year.

[CountDeMoney]

the girl bomber let off an improvised explosive device near the area of the Maiduguri market where chickens were sold.

:(So that's how they make McNuggets.

[Liep]

Can't we focus on one disaster at a time? I can't really handle to also feel horrible about Nigeria as I'm already trying to ignore Syria, plus I really have no idea what's going on in most Arabic countries but I just sort of assume it's going shit and that's several more things I need to ignore.

We could just put Africa down as "pending".

[DontSayBanana]

the girl bomber let off an improvised explosive device near the area of the Maiduguri market where chickens were sold.

:(So that's how they make McNuggets.

[jimmy olsen]

Just tragic 

Links and a map kind be found here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/boko-haram-deadliest-attack-baga-nigeria-politics-insurgency

Boko Haram massacre: 'I walked through five villages and each one was empty except for dead bodies'

Victims tell harrowing tales of attacks, but clearest revelation may be the divisive politics underlying the five-year insurgency

Why did the world ignore Baga attacks?

    Monica Mark, west Africa correspondent
    The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2015 15.02 GMT   

Yusuf Sarkin does not remember much about the massacre that drove him from the town where he was born. The gunfire and the screaming and the frenzy of bodies trying to outrun bullets flying through the sandy streets of Baga blended into one long awful blur. But another loop of horror keeps playing in his mind: that he let go of his terrified 10-year-old son's hand.

Sarkin and his wife grabbed their four children and joined others fleeing Boko Haram's murderous descent on the town on 3 January. The 51-year-old's only thought was to reach the shores of Lake Chad, around which the fishing settlement is built.

Sarkin was clutching Adamu's hand and his family started running. But when he reached the water, where panicked residents were piling into canoes, he looked down to see his son had disappeared. "Can you imagine the fear that makes you let go of your child's hand?" he asked, his voice hoarse as he relived the memory. "What happened that day, the things I saw, are so terrible."

Traumatised victims fleeing the fog of war have thrown up staggering figures for the four-day carnage that ensued; they are unlikely to know the true number of dead. But the massacre's clearest revelation may be the divisive political undercurrent on which the five-year insurgency has thrived.

Rather than addressing the mounting death toll, Nigerian officials initially traded accusations with neighbours Cameroon and Chad, allies it nominally works with against Boko Haram. With some local officials putting casualties at up to 2,000, it took a week before the government gave its first response.

The military said the massacre was Boko Haram's deadliest in its five-year insurgency, but it added that the reports of 2,000 dead "cannot be true". It suggested they were part of a smear campaign.

"From all available evidence, the number of people who lost their lives during that attack has so far not exceeded about 150 in the interim. This figure includes many of the terrorists who were bearing arms," army spokesman Chris Olukolade said, adding that there were ongoing ground and air offensives to retake the town.

But the psychological damage of the incessant attacks is indisputable. The massacre has not, so far, warranted comment from the president, Goodluck Jonathan. Months after 276 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram made global headlines – a fact which has barely featured in the campaigns of candidates jostling for election in February – a largely mute reaction from ordinary citizens points to a nation inured to violent deaths. Last year, around 27 Nigerians died each day from Boko Haram-related violence. Now the first march for Baga victims is being organised in Paris , where 1 million people poured on to the streets after the Charlie Hebdo attack.

With four days of almost unopposed carnage, the militants cemented their control of Nigeria's eastern border with Chad. The brazen attack showed not only how a fleet-footed sect has run rings around Africa's largest army but how far Boko Haram's once clear-cut aims have been lost in a haze of bloodshed as it tightens its grip on a state where it once had popular support.

Two hours north-east of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, on a road littered with burnt-out government buildings, lies the outpost of Baga. The town's remoteness made it a haven for fuel smugglers and cross-border raids by Chadian rebels in the 1980s, leading to a multinational army mission being headquartered there.

A series of lonely low-rise buildings surrounded by barbed wire and sandbags, the base nominally included troops from neighbours Niger, Cameroon and Chad. But accusations and counter-accusations of corruption and sabotage soured relations, and by November last year, after an attack by Boko Haram that killed at least 40 fishermen, only Nigerian troops were stationed there.

"This was an important base for us and it made no sense for them to pull out like that," said a Nigerian soldier who served five tours of duty in Baga and spoke on condition of anonymity to the Guardian. "The [latest] attack wasn't a surprise attack."

A military spokesperson from Niger, which has experienced attacks from Boko Haram, said its troops had withdrawn for "tactical reasons". Neither the soldier nor the official clarified when the last international troops departed.

Dawn had not yet broken when the militants began creeping in. These days, being in the wrong place at the wrong time in Borno state can cost one's life and Yusuf Ahmed, a vegetable trader who had driven from Maiduguri a day earlier, had a lucky escape.

After finishing prayers at around 5am, he noticed several camouflage trucks filled with men driving into the town. The occupants wore military fatigues, so when the gunshots began an hour later, Ahmed was not immediately frightened. "Being a Maiduguri man who is used to soldiers all over the place, I actually walked towards the direction which people said they were coming from," he said.

Nearby, another group of men started erecting roadside barriers. Among them was 37-year-old Yusuf Idris, who bought a $40 (£26) home-made musket and joined his friends in a civilian vigilante effort after a savage assault in 2013 turned Baga into Nigeria's new ground zero against Boko Haram. When they noticed a flurry of military activity, Idris and his men wanted to help. Nobody expected the coming carnage.

By the time Ahmed came upon the group of "soldiers", he knew something was wrong. "I knew they weren't soldiers because they wore military uniforms but no boots and berets," he said. Some took off towards the market, throwing money, cattle and food into their trucks. "They were laughing and saying why should they pay for what is theirs by right. They were looting everything," Ahmed said.

Another group homed in on the army base. With cries of "Allahu Akbar", the militants began shooting in earnest. At the roadblock, Idris hoisted his crude rifle and prepared to fight against insurgents armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. "All of a sudden another group who had overrun the [army] base came towards us, mounted on armoured tanks, and that was too much for us," he said. Two of the vigilantes were shot dead. The others fled.

Soldiers battled back for almost nine hours before throwing away their weapons and running into the bush, witnesses and a local official told the Guardian. No reinforcements arrived, according to the soldier and another official.

Idris, the vigilante, ran into a house whose corrugated iron roof had caved in under an onslaught of bullets. He and a shellshocked woman called Hadiza sheltered there for three days while the marauding militants looted and burnt houses. At night the two curled up beside the bullet-pocked wall and fell into an exhausted sleep to the sound of celebratory gunshots. One morning Hadiza crept out to find water and never returned. By nightfall, Idris decided to run.

"When I reached the bush, I was relieved at first but then I saw bodies everywhere. I walked through five villages and each one I passed was empty except for dead bodies."

Among the hundreds fleeing was Sarkin, the herbal doctor tormented by memories of his son's hand slipping out of his own. After two days of trekking, a wound in his leg turned puffy and black under the burning desert sun. Sarkin kept looking for his children in the ragged crowd of refugees dying of thirst and exposure around him.

"I grew up in Baga, my children schooled there. It's too painful to even cry when I think of what happened," he said from the refugee camp in Maiduguri, where motorists who picked him up eventually dropped him. Each day he combs through the hundreds of new arrivals alongside a neighbour whose children often played with his own, but both men have slowly accepted that their families have probably been killed. His youngest son, Gari, is five years old.

"Nobody has seen them. I think I have to accept that they are dead," he said quietly. "Right now my mind is confused, but when I have the strength I think I have to go somewhere else and start afresh. It's the only thing I can do now."