86 dead in Boko Haram attack in Nigeria

The Boko Haram attack was not confined within Dalori village as a nearby refugee camp, which had 25,000 people living in it, also suffered.

At least 65 people were killed during an attack by Islamist militant group Boko Haram near Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, a Reuters reporter said after counting bodies at a hospital morgue.

Colonel Mustapha Anka, an Army spokesman, said the militants opened fire and torched homes after arriving in the village on motorbikes and in two cars.

Survivor Alamin Bakura told AP that the massacre lasted for four hours and continued as three suicide bomber blew themselves up in a neighboring village full of those who were able to escape the Dalori village. Maiduguri has been a regional magnet for rural populations displaced by Boko Haram violence.

Following the attack, the European Union has said it is committed to help countries in the region in their fight against terror.

According to Yahoo News, citing the Associated Press, military assistance arrived at the scene around 8:40 p.m. on Saturday.

Armed with guns and explosives, the militants targeted the villages of Dalori and Walori, located about 6 miles from Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state. He said several of his family members were killed or wounded. “The bodies were collected by different teams and we are going round the hospitals collating the number of bodies taken there”, Mohammed Kanar, head of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for northeast Nigeria, said according to AFP.

The publication said on Monday that while it is true that Boko Haram no longer controls large towns and is not governing large territory, it pointed out that the insurgency remains deadly and that the conflict is “far from over”.

The group is seeking to assert a Sharia-inspired political system in Nigeria- a nation divided along religious lines with a Muslim-dominated north and Christian-dominated south.

The Boko Haram uprising has been going on for six years and 2.5 million people from their homes.

Boko Haram has kept up a wave of attacks despite President Muhammadu Buhari declaring late past year that Nigeria had “technically” won the war against the group.