Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a massive attack feared to be the worst in its six-year insurgency and threatened Nigeria’s neighbors, as talks began for a regional response to the militants and fears grew of further violence.
The confirmation from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau came as no surprise after multiple eyewitness accounts of the attack on Baga, which is thought to have killed hundreds, if not more.
However, Shekau claimed that the attack on Jan. 3, in which large parts of Baga were burned to the ground and at least 16 surrounding settlements were razed, was only a prelude to further attacks.
Photo: EPA
“We killed the people of Baga. We indeed killed them, as our lord instructed us in his book,” Shekau said in the 35-minute message, which was posted on YouTube.
“We will not stop. This is not much. You’ll see,” he added.
There has been mounting global outrage at the extent of the slaughter, with residents who managed to escape recounting how bodies littered the streets more than two weeks after the initial assault.
One civilian vigilante, who fled after hiding for three days, told reporters that he was “stepping on bodies” for 5km as he escaped through the bush.
Hundreds of women and children were said to be still being held by the militants at a school and the home of a local lawmaker.
About 20,000 people are said to have fled, many of them across the border into Niger and Chad, heaping pressure on the local authorities there, who fear they could soon be targeted.
“Heavy clashes” between Muslim militants and Cameroonian soldiers were reported in the far northern border village of Bonderi on Tuesday night in the latest in a series of confrontations.
Chadian President Idriss Deby has sent a contingent of troops to help Cameroon repel the threat and has talked of recapturing Baga.
Nigeria and its neighbors met on Tuesday in Niger’s capital Niamey to seek a greater regional response to Boko Haram.
Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has also suggested a new force, possibly under the auspices of the African Union, to crush the group.
However, Shekau dismissed the threat of a wider response and showed a huge arsenal of weapons, said to be taken from a military base in Doron Baga and used by troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad.
“The kings of Africa, you are late. I challenge you to attack me even now. I’m ready,” he said.
Shekau claimed that Cameroonian President Paul Biya had asked for help because he was “gripped by fear” and mocked Deby for his offer of assistance.
Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou was also warned for commiserating with France after the recent Muslim militant attacks against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
“Muhammad Yusuf [Mahamadou Issoufou], is that your job? Ah, ah, ah. Muhammad Yusuf, you will see. President of Niger, you will see,” Shekau said.
The video came after testimony from people fleeing Baga that four villages about 40km from the town had been visited by Muslim militants and their residents told to leave.
Security analysts have said the capture of Baga puts the militants in a strategic position to push south towards Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, where the group was founded in 2002.
Boko Haram was forced out of Maiduguri in 2013 after the declaration of emergency rule, but has in the last six months captured dozens of towns in the far northeast, effectively encircling the city.
It has been feared that they want to recapture Maiduguri to form the center of the hardline Muslim state it has been fighting to establish.
Shekau, who has previously declared some captured towns part of Boko Haram’s caliphate, burned the Nigerian flag to cheers of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great,” in Arabic) and celebratory gunfire.
“This is the replacement of the Nigerian flag,” he said, waving the Muslim militants’ black standard.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Nauru said it would hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language. Nauru would change its name to Naoero to “more faithfully honor our nation’s heritage, our language and our identity,” Nauruan President David Adeang said in a statement on Tuesday. The Pacific island nation’s native language is Dorerin Naoero, which is spoken by the vast majority of its approximately 10,000 inhabitants. “Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues, and was changed not by our choice, but for convenience,” the government said in
RSS