Boko Haram kills over 70 people in two Nigerian cities

The attack comes just days before President Buhari’s self-imposed deadline to stamp out the group expires on December 31, and in the same week that he said Nigeria has “technically” defeated the jihadists.

Boko Haram Islamic extremists struck a city and a town in northeastern Nigeria with rocket-propelled grenades and multiple suicide bombers Monday, killing at least 80 people, witnesses said.

President Muhammadu Buhari had expressed confidence that the Boko Haram sect’s ability to attack, seize, ravage and hold any Nigerian territories would be completely obliterated by the end of 2015. “Boko Haram is still extremely unsafe, and it’s gaining resources, notoriety, credibility and successfully expanding its reach”, said Yan St-Pierre, terrorism analyst at Berlin-based Modern Security Consulting Group to AFP.

Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria has led to the deaths of some 17,000 people, destroyed more than 1,000 schools and displaced more than 1.5 million people.

“Boko Haram insurgency, like any insurgency, is not a conventional war”.

No group or individual has so far claimed responsibility for the deadly blast, however, Nigerian officials often blame such acts of violence on Boko Haram, which have been carrying out deadly attacks since 2009.

On Sunday evening, there was a spate of suicide bombings in the key city of Maiduguri, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others.

“We don’t know how many of these bombs or these female suicide bombers were sneaked into Maiduguri last night”, he told the Associated Press news agency. Civil servant Yunusa Abdullahi described the city as “under siege” during the insurgent operation, adding that some residents had also found undetonated bombs since, one of which reportedly went off later.

The attacks came a day after the army fought Boko Haram militants west of Maiduguri, capital of Borno state and birthplace of their insurgency in the northeast of Africa’s most populous country. “About 30 people were killed with 16 others injured”, the eyewitness said.

The Nigerian military says it has arrested seven Boko Haram bomb-makers following what an army spokesman called “painstaking surveillance”.

Madagali had witnessed bombings by Boko Haram in the past and was once occupied by the insurgents.

Mohammed urged the media to support the government in public service campaign on what Islam is and the sensitisation on how to identify Improvised Explosive Devices and suicide bombers.