Hundreds of people who escaped a Boko Haram attack on their town in Nigeria’s restive north and fled to a nearby mountain said on Saturday they were without any food.
“We are in distress. We need help,” said Liman Ngosha, a farmer from the town of Gwoza in Borno State. “We have been starving for the past four days.”
“We are surviving now on wild fruits,” he told reporters by telephone from Mandara Mountain.
On Wednesday, suspected Boko Haram gunmen attacked the town, which is about 135km from the state capital of Maiduguri.
The raid left dozens dead and sent others fleeing to the mountain, which is near the border with Cameroon.
“I cannot tell the exact number of people that were killed. Before I fled, over 100 corpses littered the streets of Gworza,” Ngosha said.
The palace of the town’s emir, the police headquarters and scores of other buildings were destroyed, residents said.
“Dozens of our people have been killed by the attackers. Some were slaughtered and many others shot with guns,” resident James Mshelia told reporters.
Residents said the whereabouts of the Gwoza emir, Mohammad Idrissa Timta, was unknown.
Timta succeeded his father, Mustapha Idrissa Timta, who was killed by Boko Haram insurgents in May.
“There is no military presence in Gwoza now,” said Halima Jatau, one of the fleeing residents.
The attack on Gwoza came a few weeks after the insurgents took over Damboa, another town in the volatile state that is repeatedly attacked by the Islamist group.
Many Gworza residents who escaped the attack, including some who fled to the mountain, met in Maiduguri on Saturday with Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, who promised to discuss their plight with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.
“I share your pain and I know the difficulty that you are going through. I want to assure you that I will relay what is happening to the president and I will seek his support in the deployment of more soldiers to Gwoza,” Shettima said.
On Saturday, police fired shots at a group of about 300 Gworza residents who had gathered in central Maiduguri to protest the Boko Haram attack, injuring a 26-year-old man.
The head of the state police later apologized to the protesters saying that the policeman who fired the shot that injured the man would be tried and punished accordingly.
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