Villagers
from Gwoza area in Borno State have said that people too old to flee are being
rounded up and executed.
Islamic
extremists in northeastern Nigeria are turning their guns on elderly people,
killing more than 50 this week in a new tactic that has instilled more fear in
areas the militants call an Islamic caliphate, reported the Associated Press
(AP).
Residents
from five villages say people too elderly to flee Gwoza Local Government Area
were being rounded up and taken to two schools where the militants opened fire
on them. The villages are about 130 kilometres southeast of Maiduguri, the
Borno State capital.
“What
they are doing now is to assemble the aged people — both men and women ... and
then they just open fire on some of them,” said Muhammed Gava, a spokesman for
civil defence groups in the area. More than 50 people had been killed at
Government Day Secondary School in Gwoza, he said.
A
villager who had fled said more elderly people were being gathered and shot at
Uvaghe Central Primary School. The villager spoke on the condition of anonymity
for fear of endangering his trapped parents.
Government
officials did not immediately comment on the reports.
Nigeria’s
military said soldiers are patrolling “in search of terrorists” and “to verify
abductions” on Friday around the village of Gumburi, where witnesses say
extremists kidnapped at least 185 people a week ago.
In
another incident, a new video from Boko Haram extremists has shown gunmen
mowing down civilians lying face down in a dorm, and a leader saying they were
being killed because they are “infidels” or non-believers.
According
to AP, there were so many corpses, that the gunmen had difficulty stepping to
reach bodies still twitching with life. Most appeared to be adult men.
“We
have made sure the floor of this hall is turned red with blood, and this is how
it is going to be in all future attacks and arrests of infidels,” the group
leader said in a message.
“From
now, killing, slaughtering, destructions and bombing will be our religious duty
anywhere we invade.”
The
setting of the latest video appears to be a school, a long dormitory furnished
with bunk beds which the leader said was in Bama, a town 60 kilometers (40
miles) north of Gwoza.
Students
and schools are frequently targeted by Boko Haram, which means “Western
education is sinful” in the Hausa language.
Previously,
the militants had told residents of villages and towns that they would kill
only enemies and wanted people to live peacefully in the area they had dubbed
an Islamic caliphate, a large swath along Nigeria's northeastern border with
Cameroun that they have controlled for more than three months.
In
the video, the leader notes that the prophet Mohammed advised that prisoners should
be held, not killed, but said, “We felt this is not the right time for us to
keep prisoners; that is why we will continue to see that the grounds are
crimsoned with the flowing blood of prisoners.”
He
said some of those killed may call themselves Muslims, but were considered
infidels by Boko Haram, a Sunni Jihadi group that imposes the strict Shariah
law.
Thousands of people have
been killed and about 1.6 million driven from their homes in the five-year
insurgency that is spilling across borders into Cameroun, Chad and Niger
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