Last weekend’s fighting with the army took place in Baga near the border with Chad.
Intense fighting between the military and Islamist militants in northern Nigeria last weekend is reported to have killed at least 185 people, though the army disputed the figure, BBC said yesterday, April 22, 2013. A military spokesman in Borno State, Lt. Col. Sagir Musa, told the AFP news agency that such a high number of deaths was unthinkable.
Isa Umar Gusau, Adviser to Borno State Governor, said it was very difficult to establish the exact number of casualties, but restated the sanctity of human life. Al Jazeera TV said the fighting in Baga in Borno State near the border with Chad, began on Friday, April 19, 2013. It lasted for hours, sending residents fleeing into the arid scrubland surrounding the fishing community on Lake Chad. By Sunday April 21, 2013 when government officials finally felt safe enough to visit the area, homes, businesses and vehicles were discovered burnt throughout the area.
Some 2,000 homes were reportedly destroyed, causing many of the deaths. Residents began returning in the afternoon of Sunday, April 21, 2013 only to find most of the town’s streets strewn with human and animal corpses. Speaking in the local Kanuri language, Lawan Kole, a local government official in Baga, told visiting Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, that the authorities had found and buried at least 185 bodies by Sunday afternoon, the Associated Press news agency reported. Officials could not offer a breakdown of casualties for civilians, soldiers and Boko Haram militants. Residents said many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town.
Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye who accompanied Governor Shettima did not dispute the casualty figures, AP reported. He said Boko Haram extremists used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, RPGs, in the assault that began after soldiers surrounded a mosque they believed housed members of the radical Islamic extremist network. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer and used civilians as human shields during the fighting, Brig. Gen. Edokpaye said.
