Suspected members of the pernicious Boko Haram Islamic sect on Monday assailed Dille village in Borno State, killed 45 people and torched several houses and shops and coerced many people to flee into nearby hills for safety.
The terrorists, it was amassed, came in a convoy of over 20 conveyances and motorcycles.
According to one of the villagers, Njimtiku Papka, who verbalized with journalists in Maiduguri on the phone, the terrorists on arriving the village commenced shooting indiscriminately at everyone in optical discernment.
He verbalized, “Some of us had to flee into the nearby hills for safety, because the insurgents do not spare any person in their assailments and killings in the last three or four months. Monday’s attacks and killings bring to five other villages that had been assailed by Boko Haram gunmen, without being apprehended by the military or police since January.”
He lamented that among the people killed by the insurgents were those they considered as informants to the military.
Papka integrated, “We were caught unawares by the gunmen’s dawn attacks, because most of us were asleep but we were woken up by the chant of God is great in Arabic and sporadic gunshots. They additionally burnt down our houses and shops with petrol bombs.”
A vigilante in the village, Amos Yohanna, additionally told journalists on the telephone on Monday that more people were coming down from the hills, while the ones that fled into nearby bushes had converged on the market square, afore they fled to Lassa about 20 kilometres away to safety.
He withal verbally expressed that two hours after the assailment, a fighter jet flew in and hovered for half an hour, to probably track the fleeing insurgents into the forest.
A police officer, who verbalized anonymously to journalists from Askira town, could not ascertain the exact number of casualties of the assailment, but revealed that it took the insurgents over two hours to raze down the entire Dille village.
He verbalized, “Over three dozens of villagers lost their lives along with several houses and shops burnt down. The insurgents came through the Uba-Lassa Road in their Hilux conveyances, while others used motorcycles in assailing the village in the early hours of Monday.”
