#Dalori: Borno bleeds, Borno burns and the government is silent

“We were seated outside our home shortly after the Isha prayer when we heard gunshots and within a few minutes the invaders had arrived”, Malam Masa Dalori, a community leader, told AFP. ‘They came in Golf saloon cars and began to shoot sporadically.

Three female suicide bombers who had initially tried to mingle with the villagers “were intercepted, then blew themselves up”, he said.

Military authorities confirmed that one of the places targeted by the insurgents was the Dalori Internally Displaced Persons’ camp housing over 15,000 people, who are mostly women and children from Bama. Suicide bombers were readied to take action on groups who were caught up in the frightful chaos. Another 62 people are being treated for burns, said Abba Musa of the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri.

A mother sits mourning the death of her husband after Boko Haram attacks at Dalori village on the outskirts of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria on January 31, 2016.

“While people were running for their dear lives…three female suicide bombers attempted to make their way into the crowd…and subsequently got blown up”, Ankas told Reuters.

Some other estimates said over 100 people were killed.

Government troops who arrived at the village later on Saturday were unable to push the militants back, but reinforcements, which arrived later, prompted a retreat by Boko Haram, the AP reported.

Two days prior, a similar twin blast attack killed 11 people and injured another 35 in Chibok, the Borno state village where more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted in 2014, bringing Boko Haram’s name into worldwide infamy. I am still mourning as I lost 11 persons in the siege. The shooting and burning went on for almost four hours. “All our wives and children were brutally killed while they looted and destroyed our livestock”, he said.

The Nigerian military may be doing their best, but they are yet to win the battle against the insurgency; for a terrorist group that is “technically defeated”, these attacks by Boko Haram are several hits too many.

A Nigerian military spokesman told the wire service that Boko Haram militants attacked the village of Dalori, near the city of Maiduguri in Nigeria’s northeast.

The six-year Islamist uprising has killed about 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

In retaliation, Boko Haram has launched cross-border attacks from northern Nigeria on the neighboring countries.

Attacks have continued in the region despite claims by President Muhammadu Buhari late past year that Nigeria had “technically” won the war against the terror group.