TOTAL BLOODY: Boko Haram kills about 2,000 in latest attack

The Amnesty International has described the January 3 attack on Baga community in Borno State as the very deadliest in the history of Boko Haram’s over five-year reign of terror in Nigeria, saying about 2,000 people may have been killed during the by the heartless terrorists.

Amnesty, in a statement on Friday, said it had reports of the town being razed to the ground, leaving around 2,000 people dead in the process.

A researcher for Amnesty International in Nigeria, Daniel Eyre, said, “The attack on Baga and surrounding towns looks as if it could be Boko Haram’s deadliest act in a catalogue of increasingly heinous attacks carried out by the group.

“If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as two thousand civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught against the civilian population.

“We are currently working to find out more details of what happened during the attack on Baga and the surrounding area. This attack reiterates the urgent need for Boko Haram to stop the senseless killing of civilians and for the Nigerian government to take measures to protect a population who live in constant fear of such attacks,” Eyre added.

Since 2009 when the sect began its deadly campaign, targeting civilians and military personnel through raids and bomb attacks, scores of lives have been lost. According to United States-based Council on Foreign Relations, more than 10,000 were killed by the group last year alone, many of them children and old people.

Meanwhile, shooting and heavy artillery fire were heard on the outskirts of Damaturu on Friday, Reuters reported. Credible sources told bedinodblogspot that the state is under serious terrorist attack.