Military hunts Boko Haram after daring barracks attack

Military hunts Boko Haram after daring
barracks attack
on december 21, 2013 at 4:41 pm in news
KANO – Nigeria’s military has surrounded a village
in the northeast to flush out Islamist rebels who fled
there after reportedly snatching soldiers’ wives and
children during a daring attack on an army barracks
nearby, witnesses told AFP Saturday.
Suspected Boko Haram fighters stormed the
barracks in the town of Bama early on Friday,
spraying it with bullets before torching the
compound.
Several Bama residents told AFP the insurgents
also abducted several of the soldiers’ wives and
children during the attack.
Asked about those details, northeastern military
spokesman Mohammed Dole refered AFP to
Nigeria’s defence headquarters.
Defence spokesman Chris Olukolade could not be
reached for comment.
Bama residents said the Boko Haram gunmen fled
to the nearby village of Abbaram after the attack,
where the military sent hundreds of troops on
Saturday.
“The soldiers have besieged the village and more
troops are deploying in hundreds,” said Ibrahim
Idris.
“Nothing is happening yet but from the huge number
of troops deploying and the large number of Boko
Haram in the village one can imagine what may
happen”.
Karim Bunu, who also lives in Bama, described
Abbaram as a village of some 250 people.
“We are afraid of what will happen to the people of
Abbaram because whichever way one looks at it,
they are facing a serious security threat,” he told
AFP.
A third resident, who requested anonymity, said the
Islamists were holding in Abbaram the “women and
children of soldiers,” who had been kidnapped
during the Friday attack, in an account supported by
both Idris and Bunu.
In November, Human Rights Watch reported that
Boko Haram has increasingly used kidnappings as
a tactic, abducting scores of women and children
this year.
After staging an attack on the military, the
insurgents typically flee to far away camps to evade
pursuing troops, but their escape was slowed on
Friday by fighter jets which dropped bombs on the
major routes leading out of Bama, according to the
military and witnesses.
“I counted 18 burnt all-terrain vans belonging to the
Boko Haram gunmen pulverised by military jets,”
said the unnamed resident, who identified himself
as a member of a military-backed vigilante force
which has formed in the northeast to fight the
insurgents.
Air force jets continued to fly over the region on
Saturday, residents said.
The Bama attack was the second major Islamist
assault on the army this month, casting further
doubt on official claims that the rebels have been
weakened by a seven-month-old military offensive
in the northeast.(AFP)