Soldiers protecting the town, which has a
population of 10,000 fled on Saturday after
militants attacked the town’s military base.
Nigeria’s government today said troops had
begun a fightback against Boko Haram.
The militants first attacked Baga, in the north
of remote Borno state, on Saturday and on
Wednesday set fire to the town and razed at
least 16 towns and villages nearby.
Mike Omeri, who speaks on national security,
said security forces had been ‘actively pursuing
the militants’ since the first attack and after
the second.
‘Security forces have responded rapidly and
have deployed significant military assets and
conducted airstrikes against militant targets,’
Omeri told reporters in Abuja.
Boko Haram has been waging a five-year
insurgency to carve out an Islamic state in
northeastern Nigeria.
Local officials in and around Baga told AFP on
Wednesday that at least 20,000 people were
forced to flee their homes and that 560 had
been stranded on an island on Lake Chad since
Saturday.
Omeri said the country’s emergency
management agency was helping 2,000 people
displaced from Baga, while other agencies,
including the Red Cross, were ready to assist
when security allows.
Boko Haram has for the last six months
captured dozens of towns and villages in
northeast Nigeria as part of its aim to establish
a hardline Islamic state.
The Baga attack effectively gave it control of
all three frontiers of Borno state with
neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon,
increasing fears of cross-border attacks.
Security analysts this week said that the
militants were now in a better position to strike
south towards the Borno state capital,
Maiduguri, where the group was founded in
2002.
It has also cast doubt on the ability to hold
general elections in the affected areas,
scheduled for next month.
Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official,
told the BBC that fleeing residents told him
that Baga was now ‘virtually non-existent’,
adding those who fled reported that they had
been unable to bury the dead, and corpses
littered the town’s streets.
Nigeria’s government maintains it is on top of
the situation, despite repeated claims of a lack
of military presence in the region and
complaints from soldiers about inadequate
weapons and kit.
Omeri condemned the latest attacks as ‘brutal
and barbaric’ and said they represented ‘none
of the people of Nigeria and no religion’.
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