The attack Saturday night in Dalori village, about 4 miles from the city of Maiduguri, came as people entered mosques for evening prayers, a resident of the village said.
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The attack spotlighted the Islamist insurgency’s brutal punishment of those fleeing its violence.
Another resident by the name of Ibrahim Muhammad said that the Boko Haram insurgents had dressed up as military personnel and began opening fire on everybody. Several of them set fire to mud-brick homes with families trapped inside. Many people ran to the bush including myself.
“We evacuated 36 dead bodies from the village to the hospital while the civilian (joint task force) evacuated another 10”, he said.
Bakura recalled the horrific moment Boko Haram extremists firebombed huts and the screams of children burning to death.
At least 65 people were killed and 136 others injured, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said on its official Twitter account Monday, though some accounts put the death toll higher.
Last year, Boko Haram overtook ISIS as the world’s most deadly terrorist organization, according to data released by the Global Terrorism Index.
Such attacks on undefended villages across northeastern Nigeria have become common for Boko Haram, as a way to show up the military for its inability to fend them off.
Nigeria’s President Muhhamadu Buhari’s bold statement that the group is “technically defeated” only sparked outrage and deliberately caused Boko Haram to inflict danger to the small villages in the country.
Soldiers arrived at Dalori about 8:40 p.m. Saturday but were unable to overcome the attackers, who were better-armed, said soldiers who spoke on the same condition of anonymity. “All our wives and children were brutally killed while they looted and destroyed our livestock”, he said.
“I have called my relatives in Maiduguri but they have not seen them”.
But Boko Haram attacks are not limited only to Nigeria.
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Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State – also known as ISIS or ISIL – and killed about 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million Nigerians from their homes over a six-year period.
