Village chief among dozen executed in Nigeria

Boko Haram fighters have executed 12 people including a village chief in a remote part of northeastern Nigeria, residents have said, amid warnings of anticipated attacks by the group over Eid.

The attackers entered the village of Garubula, in Biu district, late on Wednesday and dragged their victims out of their homes before shooting them, the residents said.

“They killed 12 people including the village chief whom they shot in the head,” Mallam Idrissa, a resident of the village told AFP news agency on Saturday.

The news came as an army spokesman warned that Boko Haram had “perfected plans to launch multiple bomb explosions in Maiduguri” – the biggest city in the northeastern region and Boko Haram’s spiritual home – to coincide with Eid celebrations early next week.

As a result, authorities had declared a three-day ban on “all vehicular movement” in the city from Monday, Mohammed Dole said in a statement.

Police station attacked

Boko Haram has recently stepped up attacks on remote villages in the northeast.

Dozens of the group’s gunmen raided the town of Rann in Borno state on the border with Cameroon on Friday, meeting fierce resistance, residents said.

Before retreating the group’s fighters hurled explosives into the police station, setting it ablaze, and bombed a local administrative building and a government lodge, they said, adding that no casualties were recorded.

“They came into town around 6pm and made straight for the police station where they opened fire and the police responded, resulting in a shootout that lasted for one hour,” resident Bunu Faltaye told AFP.

Then early on Saturday the attackers went to Sigal village seven kilometres away and abducted a police officer from his house, said Timothy Musa, another resident.

“We have no idea where they are holding him and we fear for his life,” Musa said.

Also on Wednesday, bombings in which 42 people died in north-central Kaduna were blamed on Boko Haram. The presumed targets of the attacks, a prominent imam and a former head of state, escaped with their lives.