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| Police Headquarters |
By Michael Olugbode
Suspected members of the terrorist Islamic sect, Boko Haram,
believed
to have fled their destroyed camps in parts of Borno, Yobe
and Adamawa
States as a result of the ongoing clampdown by the military,
have
resurfaced in Gwoza, a Borno town attacking four communities
and
torching their churches.
It was gathered that the sect members attacked four
communities of
Hwa’a, Kunde, Gathahure and Gjigga of Gwoza Hills
settlements on
Thursday torching four churches with Improvised Explosives
Devices
(IEDS) and petro-bombs.
A resident of Kunde, Tada Garuta told journalists that the
gunmen
climbed the hills by foot with explosives and petro-bombs,
and after
chanting “Allahu Akbar” meaning God is great, set ablaze
four local
churches.
The bandits equally ransacked and emptied the bans of grains
of
residents of the communities, and went away with some
livestock of
Gathahure and Hwa’a communities before dawn.
The attacked communities are located in Gwoza council area
of Borno
State on Mandara Hills, about 151 kilometres south of Maiduguri, the
state capital.
Garuta who spoke to journalists yesterday at the Bama road
Motor Park
in Maiduguri, narrated
that the hoodlums after torching the church in
Hwa’a community, killed Rev. Jacob Kwiza (rtd) of Church of
Christ in
Nigeria (COCIN).
He narrated: “The gunmen threw some explosives at our
church, they
forced the retired Reverend to renounce Christianity and be
converted
to Islam, but Rev. Jacob defied the gunmen’s threat of being
killed.”
“After he refused to renounce his faith. They slit his
throat with
sharp objects; and we started to flee for safety, as we
don’t know the
next targets of these gunmen.”
He said the people were over-awed with fear and could not
immediately
go back to the hills to pick the corpse of the slain
clergyman as it
laid on the fields for two days.
Lamenting on the continued fears of hills dwellers in Gwoza,
Garuta
said: “after the church at Hrazah was also torched by the
gunmen, the
people had to flee and relocated to Ngoshe Ndahang, a hill
dwelling
community, 10 kilometres east of Limankara, a border village
with
Cameroon and Adamawa State in Borno State.”
On other attacks in the area, Garuta disclosed that the
district heads
of Kurana Bassa and Damboa were also killed by gunmen, and
that when
the principal (name withheld) of Day Secondary School; Izge
was
travelling on his motorcycle to the school on Thursday, he
was trailed
and shot dead by unknown gunmen.
He said: “the district head of Kurana Bassa was trailed by
gunmen in a
Golf Volkswagen vehicle, before he was shot dead at Mbamba
village of
Gwoza council area of the state.”
Speaking on infiltration of fleeing Boko Haram gunmen into
the
neighbouring towns of Gwoza, Damboa, Chibok and other
communities
yesterday; a top military officer of the Special Operation
Force who
does not want his name in print said that the gunmen could
have fled
from their destroyed training camps of Sambisa Games Reserve
Forest.
He said: “all the attacked towns and communities; where
churches and
local residents were recently burnt and killed by the
suspected Boko
Haram gunmen, are located at the peripheries and borders of
the Borno
forests, which had been reclaimed and being patrolled by
soldiers
since the commencement of our operations here in this
state.”
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