Borno State of Nigeria has become the most attacked state recently. The Boko-Haram insurgents who invaded four villages; Goshe, Attagara, Agapalawa and Aganjara in Gwoza LGA of Borno State were said to have dressed in military uniforms, pretending to be soldiers and leaving no fewer than 200 people killed!
It was actually a double day attack which occurred on Sunday and Monday respectively. After the shooting of nine worshippers in a church in Attagara Village during a church service last Sunday, information dribbled around the neighbourhood that the
insurgents might attack again so the villagers informed the military personnel in Gwoza town
but were not taken seriously, even though the soldiers promised to
follow up on the report. A resident of Gwoza; Ngalamuda Ibrahim said:
“When the attackers came, most residents of the community actually
thought they were military personnel. It didn’t occur to them they are
Boko Haram. Over 200 corpses are laying in the villages now yet to be
buried,”
Another resident of Attagara who lost four of his younger brothers
during the Monday carnage said:
“They came in military Hilux; and we all
thought they were the soldiers that we earlier reported that the
insurgents might attack us.”
“When they came in over 10 Hilux vehicles, we all felt relieved that
at last the military had arrived, so we went to them and they told us
that ‘we are soldiers and we are here to protect you all.’
“They then urged all of us to converge at a particular spot at the
centre of the village; we all complied; but when they saw that a
sizeable number of us had converged, they began to shout ‘Allahu-Akbar,
Allahu-Akbar’ on top of their voices, then they began to fire at the
people continuously for a very long time until all that gathered were
all dead”,
“I lost four of my blood brothers in the massacre”,
“I was lucky to escape because I was not very close by when the gunmen
started shooting at our people, I was going round to inform people that
the soldiers had come and they wanted to address us; I managed to escape
through villages in Adamawa State and later made it to Maiduguri.”