The Islamic insurgency Boko Haram in
Nigeria killed 217 people during attacks on five villages Thursday and
Friday, a ranking official said, the latest massacre in Nigeria's rural
and inaccessible northeast.
Suspected
fighters from the sect burned down four villages over two days, shooting
210 civilians as they ran from house to house, said Sen.
Ahmed Zanna.
In a fifth town, Dikwa, they burned down a teachers' college,
killing seven, said Sen. Zanna, the leading legislator from Borno state,
which is the epicenter of Boko Haram's war to impose Quranic law across
Africa's biggest economy.
Spokespeople
for the military and police didn't answer calls to their cellphones. The
military would release a statement on the attacks later today, said an
army official based in the capital, who wasn't authorized to be
identified by name.
Mass killings of
similar scale have become almost weekly events in war-troubled
northeastern Nigeria. Often, word takes days to trickle out, hindered by
the remoteness of the region's scattered villages. Many of those towns
have been without cellphone reception for much of the past year as
Nigeria's military shut down towers in an attempt to block Boko Haram's
internal communications.
Though Boko
Haram didn't immediately claim the attack, it fits a pattern in
Nigeria's northeast: Increasingly, the sect is carrying out horrific
reprisals against pro-government villages far removed from military
protection.
"They're lashing out at people that don't support them," said Cambridge University Nigeria researcher
Adam Higazi.
"It's a serious problem."
In a rambling video sermon last month, Boko Haram's leader,
Abubakar Shekau,
took credit for similar attacks, and threatened more to come.
"There
are only two groups of people in the world: There are either those who
are with us or against us," he said, flanked by rifle-toting gunmen.
"This is my only focus now."
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