Bloodbath in Borno as Boko Haram kills 20 Civilians

Suspected Islamist militants also known as Boko Haram attacked
a fishing settlement in northeast Nigeria over the weekend,
killing 20 civilians, the military said on Sunday.

The assault targeted Baga, a town on the shores of Lake Chad,
until recently a stronghold for Islamist sect Boko Haram.
A concerted military crackdown in the northeast since mid-May
has weakened the four-year-old insurgency, which is fighting to
carve an Islamic state out of religiously-mixed Nigeria.

But it has also pushed the militants into hiding, mostly along a
mountainous area near the Cameroon border, intelligence
sources say, from where they can launch devastating attacks.
"The sect members came armed and started shooting
sporadically, killing 20 civilians," said Lieutenant Haruna Sani,
spokesman for the multinational force of soldiers from Niger,
Chad and Nigeria tasked with security along Nigeria's porous
northeastern borders. The attack was on Saturday.

Baga was the scene of a clash between the multinational force
and the Islamists that killed dozens of people in April - the army
said 37 people were killed, but local leaders said around 185,
most of them civilians, died in the violence.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in
Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states on May 14, ordering in extra
troops. Nigerian forces say their offensive has enabled them to
wrest back control of the remote northeast, destroy important
bases and arrest hundreds of suspected insurgents.

In response, the sect has turned its attention to civilians. Boko
Haram - whose name roughly translates as 'Western education
is sinful' - has attacked at least four schools there over the past
month, killings dozens of pupils.

Civilian vigilantes have sprung up, helping Nigerian forces to
identify and arrest Boko Haram members.
Some have been killed in retaliation.

Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, spokesman for Nigerian forces
in Borno state, where Baga and Maiduguri lie, said one vigilante
youth was killed and one wounded in the village of Mainok.

Source: Reuters