Nigerian soldiers have reportedly killed 16
men in the country’s northeast just hours
after they were arrested leaving a mosque,
according to nurses at a hospital that
received the bodies.
Troops rounded up 17 people, including a
Muslim religious leader, as they left morning
prayers at a mosque on Wednesday from
the Dogo Tebo area of Potiskum in Yobe
state.
Residents and hospital staff said the bodies
of 16 men were found dead with bullet
wounds.
“All the bodies have gunshot wounds on
them,” a nurse speaking on condition of
anonymity said.
Residents said the Muslim religious leader
was not among the dead, and said they
were “worried about what they could do to
him”.
Community leaders believe the 16 men were
picked up and killed because all of them
were from the Kanuri ethnic group that
forms the bulk of Boko Haram’s
membership.
“We demand a probe into this unjustifiable
murder,” said one community leader, adding
“our fear is we don’t know what they will do
next”.
Human rights groups in Nigeria and abroad
have previously accused the military of
carrying out extra-judicial killings in the fight
against Boko Haram.
Amnesty International, the UK-based rights
monitor, said in March that there was
“credible evidence” that more than 600
people were summarily executed in the
Borno state capital, Maiduguri, after a Boko
Haram jail break.
Concerns have also been expressed about
atrocities perpetrated by vigilantes, who
have assisted the military against Boko
Haram.
On Friday vigilantes in the Borno town of
Biu said they and troops had decapitated 41
Boko Haram fighters who were planning a
raid in the village of Sabon Gari, in the
south of the state.
Two residents said the heads were put on
spikes and paraded through the town.
“It was like hunters displaying their game
after a hunting expedition,” Silas Buba, a
resident, said.
Human Rights Watch, the US-based rights
monitor, said the alleged beheadings were
consistent with the vigilantes’ recent
conduct.
Formed in 2002, Boko Haram is against
Western education and has been battling
the government in the country’s north and
has repeatedly attacked schools, churches,
mosques and markets as it seeks to impose
a strict interpretation of Islam in territory it
controls.
More than 700,000 people have been
displaced externally and internally as
government forces try to hunt down Boko
haram fighters, the UN refugee agency,
UNHCR says.
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