No fewer than 13 persons were reportedly killed and 20 houses destroyed in fresh communal crisis that ensued between the youth of Angbaaye and Aturuku communities in Ukum Local Government Area of Benue state.
This was just as suspected members of Boko Haram killed 14 pro-government youth vigilantes in an attack on Bama village in Borno State, a local official who attended the mass funeral for the victims told Reuters reports yesterday.
Still on the Benue crisis, LEADERSHIP gathered, yesterday, that the incident happened at about 9 pm on Sunday when members of the two communities had gone to their beds and some unidentified youths suspected to be armed robbers stormed the place for reprisal.
It was gathered that the crisis erupted when some students from the Angbaaye area who were coming back from school encountered some youths that barricaded the road and denied them passage.
The students were said to have been infuriated and insisted that the road must be opened and forcefully dismantled the barricade.
Another version of the story said that there had been a long standing misunderstanding between youths of the two communities on the issues of armed robbery and cult related activities. Our correspondent gathered that the youths of both communities have been attacking each other and robbing residents of valuable belongings.
In the present fracas, it was learnt that more than 20 houses in the two affected communities were totally burnt by the demonstrating youths who killed and injured scores of persons interchangeably. The police in Ukum local government were said to have been drafted to the scene to maintain law and order.
However, the commissioner of police in Benue state, Mr Adams Audu confirmed the outbreak of the crisis to newsmen in Makurdi but said that “we are trying to get the facts. But there were clashes in those localities and the police are on top of the situation.” He stated that houses were burnt and persons killed but the command was yet to ascertain the number of casualties.
The Bama incident, according to sources, was one of a spate of deadly assaults by the Boko Haram Islamist sect this month that raises doubts about whether a military offensive against it since May can succeed.
Local vigilante groups run by youth volunteers have been instrumental in helping the military capture Boko Haram members, but they have also made them a target for the insurgents, drawing civilians further into the conflict.
Alhaji Baba Shehu Gulumba, chairman of Bama local council, told journalists in the nearest main city of Maiduguri that insurgents disguised as soldiers lured the youths into a trap. Nine others were wounded.
“They were on guard duty when the sect members dressed in military camouflage came and told them that they were needed at a meeting nearby,” he said. “When they had been lured away from their duty posts they were then attacked and killed.”
Bama is in Borno state, the center of the insurgency. The town is not far from a mountainous area along the Cameroon border where many Boko Haram fighters are believed to be holding out, after being cleared from other areas by Nigerian forces.
Their four-year battle to revive an ancient Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Nigeria remains the main security threat to Africa’s top oil producer.
The military announced a week ago that Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau may have died between late July and early August from bullet wounds he received during a gun battle weeks before.
If he did die, not only has it failed to stem the violence, but deadly attacks are actually up on a month ago.
Last Monday, suspected Islamists killed 44 people in the village of Bemba, near Lake Chad, an area of porous borders with Niger, Cameroon and Chad that was an Islamist stronghold before President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the northeast in the middle of May.
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