Islamist Boko Haram insurgents have overrun much of a north-eastern
Nigerian town after hours of fighting that has killed scores and
displaced thousands of residents, several security sources said on
Tuesday.
The Islamists launched an attack on the town of Bama,
70km from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, on Monday. They were
initially repelled but came back in greater numbers overnight, the
sources and witnesses said.
Nigeria's defence spokesman did not
immediately respond to a request for comment. The sources said there
were heavy casualties on both sides. One security source said as many as
5 000 people fled the town.
In a bungled air strike, several
Nigerian troops were killed at the Bama armoury by a fighter jet
targeting the insurgents, a soldier on the ground told Reuters.
Biggest security threat
Two
months after Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria declared the area
they seized an Islamic caliphate, Boko Haram has also for the first time
explicitly laid claim to territory it says it controls in parts of
northeast Nigeria.
They captured the remote hilly farming town of
Gwoza, along the Cameroon border, during fighting last month. The
group's leader Abubakar Shekau in a video declared it a "Muslim
territory" that would be ruled by strict Islamic law.
Shekau's
forces have killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009 to
revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Nigeria, and
are seen as the biggest security threat to the continent's leading
energy producer.
"When we started hearing gunshots, everybody was
confused. There was firing from different directions. We just ran to the
outskirts of town," Bukar Auwalu, a trader who fled with his wife,
three children and brother, told Reuters by phone.
"There were military helicopters and a fighter jet. We slept in the bush on the outskirts of town."
Bloody insurgency
Because
of Bama's proximity to Maiduguri, a large metropolis and home of a
major army base, security officials are worried there is now little to
keep Boko Haram from gaining access to a key city that was also the
birthplace of their movement.
Boko Haram briefly got itself in the
international spotlight on July 22, when its fighters kidnapped more
than 200 girls from a school in the north-eastern village of Chibok in
April. They remain in captivity.
Their tactics have started to
resemble those of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance
Army: kidnapping boys and forcing them to fight while taking girls as
"wives".
A military offensive launched over a year ago that was meant to crush them has merely made the rebels more brutal.
The
apparent powerlessness of the military to protect civilians or prevent
the militants mounting constant raids has triggered much criticism of
President Goodluck Jonathan's administration, although it argues
counter-insurgency is something new the government is having to learn
how to fight.
'The situation is bad'
A
soldier involved in the Bama fighting, who declined to be named, said
the insurgents had targeted the Bama armoury with heavy weapons
including tanks. As troops tried to repel the attack, they called in air
reinforcements.
But by the time the fighter jet arrived, they had
mostly lost the battle for this location. The jet then bombed the area
but accidentally killed everyone there, both Nigerian troops and
insurgents, the soldier said.
"The situation is bad. We lost so many of our men," he said.
Farmer
Ibrahim Malu said hundreds had fled the town. He had gone out to his
farm just before morning prayers when gunfire and loud explosions
erupted. He ran back home, but by the time he got there his wife and
children had already fled.
"I still don't even know where they
could be," he told Reuters by telephone. "Two soldiers fled with me. One
of them didn't even have any shoes."
![NG-[C:G.Watc,B:Casi,Wk:4715,Dim:300X250]:Casio](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tOefGAO1n-mQDB3wpl0zFDNZKVhXEkbkNfuTK2qALOsmmywkd0jUAcZ6GCacb3eQlhlqm7NsHrDreSIHomVYg5Gc08NL4ED_HgCpiayrfyboYE5yKVI9qIP8E-1xUPVgB6eBiQTeoLFir5OTQTN0YkvdALZXV-u5_MW3RsoR5uoiWt9p45ig=s0-d)