86 killed in Boko Haram attack

Amnesty says Gen Mohammed was “in command of operations when the military executed more than 640 detainees following a Boko Haram attack on the detention centre in Giwa barracks on 14 March 2014”. Officials say, per the Times, that Boko Haram is resorting to such raids because it can no longer effectively control villages due advances made by a Nigerian-led campaign against the group.

The death toll could have been even higher since the gunmen tried to enter a camp housing almost 25,000 refugees near Dalori.

He said he saw militants firebomb huts and heard the screams of children as people were burned to death.

Army spokesman Colonel Mustapha Anka said the assailants had opened fire after arriving in the village on motorbikes and in two cars and had then begun torching homes.

A survivor, identified as Alamin Bakura, told AP the shooting and explosions continued “for almost four hours”.

Troops arrived at Dalori around 8:40 p.m. Saturday but were unable to overcome the attackers, who were better armed, said soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The distraught man told the AP in a telephone call that several members of his family were killed or wounded in the attack, which occurred Saturday evening.

The European Union quickly condemned the attack, saying it was committed to supporting regional African states in the fight against Boko Haram and other extremist groups.

About 20,000 people have been killed in the period of six years of a fight between the extremists and the government troops while about 2.3 million people have been displaced, Al Jazeera reported. In response, Boko Haram has launched cross-border attacks from northern Nigeria on the neighboring countries.

Since they were driven out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria a year ago, the Boko Haram militants have been taking their revenge on soft civilian targets, oftentimes using suicide bombers to kill more people.

And despite slaughtering considerably more people than other radical organizations, atrocities by Boko Haram don’t generate as many headlines as ISIS or Taliban because they mostly operate in north Africa – a region largely ignored by the mainstream media.