Monday, 23 June 2014

Don't forget the kidnapped girls - or Boko Haram's other victims


In spite of the energetic worldwide ‘Bring Back our Girls’ campaign, the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, continues to hold the 200 schoolgirls it kidnapped in April.

And the group, whose name means ‘Western Education is forbidden’, mounted further attacks over the weekend in the country’s north-eastern state of Borno. They rolled into two villages is suv’s and spent six hours burning houses and gunning down everyone they could find. Dozens of people were killed.

Apparently they told villagers they had come to preach to them, and then when they had gathered a crowd, they opened fire. Witnesses said that on this occasion, Nigerian armed forces – often criticised for their inaction – did try to launch a counter-attack, killing a number of Boko Haram fighters.

It is just the latest in a series of attacks by the group in the region that have seen hundreds of people killed in the last few months. 45 died in Borno’s capital, Maiduguri, at the beginning of this month, but Boko Haram have also struck in Nigeria’s capital city, Abjua.  

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