Boko Haram insurgents killed at least four villagers on Tuesday and kidnapped three women close to the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok where the group notoriously abducted more than 200 girls two years ago, residents and survivors said.
According to reports by TVC News, Boko Haram jihadist stormed the Kautuva village at dawn, set houses ablaze and fired on residents, quoting villagers and a member of a vigilante group working with the army.
“Some of us were lucky to survive and ran to Chibok,” said a man who gave his name as Ali Pagu. Another resident said the jihadists had kidnapped three women.
Kautuva lies near Chibok, a town from where Boko Haram seized 276 girls from a school in April 2014, part of a seven-year-old insurgency to set up an Islamic state in the north. It has left some 15,000 people dead and more than 2 million displaced.
In Niger, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Boko Haram attacks have increased since January. Intensified military offensives from the regional multinational force and troops from the Lake Chad Basin countries have forced the gunmen to retreat to the border areas between Niger and Nigeria where they attack villages that have little or no military presence.
Under Buhari’s command and aided by Nigeria’s neighbors, the army has recaptured most territory once lost to Boko Haram, but the group still managed to stage sporadic attacks mostly through suicide bombings.
