Yobe, Borno villages under Boko Haram attacks

Hours after soldiers of the 7th Division of the Nigerian Army celebrated the killing of over 70 Boko Haram terrorists after repelling attack on a village near Maiduguri, the insurgents have launched fresh attacks on two towns near Potiskum, residents have told PREMIUM TIMES.The attacks are still going on as the time of filing this report, witnesses said.The two towns under attacks are Damagum in Fune local government area and Mamudo in Potiskum local government.came under heavy attack of suspected Boko Haram terrorists when residents of the neighbouring towns were about to retire back to their homes on Friday.

Mallam Yahaya, a business merchant in Damagum, informed PREMIUM TIMES on telephone that he and other residents began to hear gunshots at about 6p.m.

“The shooting started at about 6p.m shortly after the late evening prayers; we didn’t know what was happening but when it became persistent as we continued to hear the shooting coming from the direction of the local government secretariat, we had to flee to our homes,” Mr. Yahaya said.

“We are still lying down on our bellies now as I speak and everywhere is quite but we continued to hear periodic shooting and many sounds of motorcycles moving around the streets; that makes us to fear that our town may have been taken over by Boko Haram because no one is allowed by the soldiers to ride motorcles once it’s 6pm.

Details of the ongoing attack is sketchy at this time as the police and the military cannot be reached for comments.

Meanwhile, soldiers of the Nigerian Army yesterday said they killed 75 members of the Boko Haram sect at Bulabulin village near Damboa town of Borno state as the insurgents attacked the town.

An electricity company official, who witnessed the incident as he worked alongside some of his colleagues fixing some of the destroyed electric installations said “they were many in number when they came to town, but it was as if the soldiers were aware of their coming, so they laid ambush and then opened fire on them, killing over 70 of them while many others abandoned their vehicles and fled.

A soldier in Maiduguri, who cannot be named in this report because he was not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed the incident.

In the seized town of Gwoza, reports coming through local hunters said the Boko Haram gunmen in charge of the area have begun serial massacre of old men and women who could not flee from the captured territories.

Muhammed Gava, an operative with the Nigeria Vigilante Group, who is an indigene of Gwoza town and resident of Maiduguri, said “we heard that more than 50 old men and women have been forcefully taken to Government Day Secondary School, Gwoza, where they would assemble them and then open fire on some of them”.

He said a relative from Gwoza who spoke to him from the top of the mountains using phone lines tapped from Cameroonian networks said “more people are being forced to assemble in other areas like Dhimankara, Ville, Kuranabasa, Gudugum and some other nearby villages and being taken to Uvaghe Central Primary school“.

There has not been any official statement in regard of these attacks.