Nigeria: Boko Haram Attacks Village Again

Thursday, February 27, 2014

By Joseph DeCaro

ABUJA, NIGERIA (Worthy News)-- During the weekend, gunmen believed to be members of the Boko Haram Islamist sect had once again attacked the northeastern Nigeria village of Izghe in Borno state.

A villager told the British Broadcasting Corp. that four people were killed during the raid, but just a week earlier, 106 Christians in Izghe were killed by Haram's militant Muslims during five frenzied hours of mass murder.

Last year President Goodluck Jonathan had declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states that gave Nigeria's security forces extraordinary powers to help fight Boko Haram. But Borno state Senator Ali Ndume told the BBC that if the state of emergency was intended to end Haram's Islamic insurgency it obviously wasn't working after more than 500 people had been killed in his state alone during the last two months.

Ndume said the army hasn't taken any further measures to end the violence. In fact, after the army failed to deploy troops to Izghe after the first attack, it gave Boko Haram the opportunity to once again attack the village with impunity. Although many of Izghe's villagers fled after the first attack, some elderly residents remained and unfortunately four of them died for that decision.

Despite the repeated attacks, the Nigerian government has claimed that it was winning the war against Haram's Islamist militants who are fighting to establish a strict Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

Boko Haram -- whose name roughly translates as "Western ways are evil" -- has killed thousands of Christians and hundreds of Muslims since it began an uprising in 2009.