Gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram have killed 21 people in Yobe state
A local official and a victim’s relative said that the people were trying to come back home to retrieve abandoned food supplies.
Baba Nuhu, an official from the Gujba local government said: “The men, 21 of them, were stopped at Bultaram (village) by gunmen we believe are Boko Haram who shot them dead.”
Nuhu and Haruna Maram, the brother of one of the victims, spoke to reporters from Yobe’s capital Damaturu, where many Gujba inhabitants have run to seek safety from Boko Haram aggression.
“My brother and 20 others wanted to bring back their grains to augment their lean food supplies to feed their families,” Maram said.
“Unfortunately, they were killed by (the) same Boko Haram we ran away from.”
Gujba is one of a smattering of areas in Yobe that Boko Haram took during a sweeping offensive last year.
The district has been hit by series of onslaughts through the six-year terrorism uprising, comprising a massacre at an agricultural college in 2013 that targeted students sleeping their dormitories.
The army has declared a series of successes against insurgents in an operation launched in February with neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
Scores of towns previously under rebel control have reportedly been retaken.
Nigeria’s army and the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan have pleased those displaced by the uprising to return home, announcing much of the northeast safe for resettlement.
But community leaders in the unsecured area have cautioned civilians are still at risk of Boko Haram attacks, particularly those returning to remote areas like Gujba where the military’s deployment has typically been thin.
Security experts have warned that the terrorists are far from defeated andare still able of launching hit-and-run onslaught.
The army has recently started an operation on liberating Sambisa Forest, the last notorious Boko Haram hideout, where the Chibok girls are supposedly being held.
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