Boko Haram Islamists slit the
throats of 10 fishermen in villages near Baga on the shores of the Lake
Chad in northeastern Nigeria, a leading fisherman and a resident said
Thursday.
"On Monday
around 4 pm (1500 GMT), Boko Haram attacked three villages on the shores
of Lake Chad where they slaughtered 10 people, all of them fishermen,"
Abubakar Gamandi, head of the fishermen's union in Borno State, told
AFP.
The account was confirmed by a local fisherman, Buhari Dan-Malam, who lives in Doron Baga.
"The
Boko Haram gunmen came around 4:00 pm and they attacked three villages
(that are five kilometres/three miles from Doron Baga). They slit the
throats of 10 people," he said.
The
villages attacked on Monday were Bundaram, where they killed four
people, Fishdam, where they killed two people, and Kwatar Mali, where
they killed four people," Gamandi said.
"Boko
Haram decided not to use guns so as not to attract the attention of
soldiers from Baga. This is why they used knives to slaughter their
victims," he said.
The fishing villages around Baga were abandoned in January after some of the most deadly attacks by the Islamist sect.
But
"in the last month, residents in the Baga area displaced by the Boko
Haram takeover of the area in January have been returning to some
villages secured by the military to continue their fishing business,"
Gamandi said.
"They take
their catch back to Maiduguri (the state capital) to sell and make a
living because living in the IDP (internally displaced people) camps has
become difficult due to lack of food."
The army had authorised the displaced people to go back to fish in the villages, he added.
The
jihadists had attempted to enter Doron Baga on Monday but villagers
"mobilised and began booing them. And that helped in keeping them away,"
Dan-Malam said.
"Because of our daring act
we let them believe soldiers were in the village. They then went and
camped in Dawashi, another village. To avoid being attacked, we went to
Maiduguri," he said.
But they
later returned "because fishing is all we know. Now there is fish in
the lake which had been left untapped since January," he said.
Last
week, nine water melon growers were also killed in Dabar Wiya where
they had returned to harvest their produce, said Gamandi who did not
provide further details.
The hundreds of islets separated by
channels hidden by tall grass in the Lake Chad region provides cover for
the militants to steal livestock and food from local inhabitants.
The
jihadists, now affiliated with the Islamic State group, have been using
the islands as a rear base after being routed from their traditional
strongholds in Nigeria by a four-country military offensive against
them.
The Chadian army has launched a "major operation" to flush
out Boko Haram jihadists from Lake Chad, sparking violent clashes on
Monday between soldiers and the group.
Chadian forces have "around
1,000 men positioned to occupy all the islands and neutralise Boko
Haram," a security official told AFP.
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