Dozens killed in Boko Haram attack as police storm House
What you need to know:
- New York-based Human Rights Watch says Boko Haram has killed more than 2,000 civilians already this year.
- The country’s main opposition party had said it opposed prolonging the state of emergency, describing it as a complete failure that had failed to curb Islamist violence.
LAGOS
Dozens of people have been killed in an attack by suspected Boko Haram militants in north-eastern Nigeria, officials and witnesses said.
Gunmen rampaged through the village of Azaya Kura in the Mafa area in Borno state, killing at least 45 people. Shettima Lawan, caretaker chairman of the local government, called it “wicked and despicable”, AFP reports.
Boko Haram has taken control of a series of towns and villages in north-eastern Nigeria in recent months.
Authorities have struggled to defeat the militant Islamist group, which has been waging an insurgency in Nigeria since 2009. New York-based Human Rights Watch says Boko Haram has killed more than 2,000 civilians already this year.
Muhammed Gava, the leader of a vigilante fighter group, told the Associated Press that heavily armed Boko Haram militants surged through Azaya Kura in several vehicles on Wednesday.
“We counted 45 bodies at the end of the attack,” village chief Mallam Bulama told AFP. But others may have died after they fled into the bush, residents said. The village is about 40km (25 miles) from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state.
SECURITY VOTE
Nigerian police fired teargas inside parliament on Thursday, apparently trying to block opposition lawmakers, including the speaker of the lower house, from entering for a key security vote.
In the fracas, lower house members rejected a government request to extend emergency rule in the northeast region hit hardest by Boko Haram, and announced that the special powers had expired.
The country’s main opposition party had said it opposed prolonging the state of emergency, describing it as a complete failure that had failed to curb Islamist violence.
Boko Haram were suspected of killing at least 45 people on Wednesday in an attack on the village of Azaya Kura in the Mafa area of Borno state, local government officials and residents said.
The caretaker chairman of Mafa local government area, Shettima Lawan called the attack, which also left at least 50 injured, “wicked and despicable”.
POLITICAL TENSION
Political tensions have ratcheted up before elections due in February next year and Senate President David Mark, a ruling party stalwart, ordered the immediate closure of both chambers over the teargas incident.
The focus of the police aggression appeared to be lower house speaker Aminu Tambuwal, whose defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) last month outraged the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The PDP has tried to remove Tambuwal from the speaker’s chair and stripped him of his security detail.
