Monday, January 13, 2025 - No fewer than forty farmers have been k!lled while the whereabouts of many others is yet to be ascertained after Boko Haram/Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) terrorists attacked Dumba, a farming settlement in Kukawa local government area of Borno State.
Leadership reports that residents of the area say the terrorists stormed
the area at about 3pm on Sunday afternoon, January 12, with sophisticated
weapons and rounded them up. One of the farmers who escaped unhurt said the
terrorists, before embarking on a shooting spree, told them that farming
activities, which according to them was banned, has not been lifted in the
area, hence the terrorists said that anyone found farming there henceforth
would be killed.
“We are the people farming at Dumba. Today (Sunday), the terrorists came
and met us in the area. They chased us out of the farm and said that they had
not lifted the ban on farming in the area. They said any farmer found in the
area henceforth would be k!lled.
They k!lled many of our farmers. It was in the night that we ran to
soldiers and Civilian Joint Taskforce (CJTF) members who assisted in taking us
to a safer place.
We were farming together with those killed, God saved me. The dead
bodies that I counted were about 40 of them. The rest that were shot in the
bush and those that escaped with gunshot wounds could not be accounted for,” he
narrated.
Also, craving anonymity, a member of the CJTF, who participated in
rescuing the survivors, said such attacks on the farmers by the terrorists have
been a recurring issue, adding that at times the terrorists would kill up to 10
of the farmers, and that such killings usually go unreported, but that the
alarming rate of the present killings pushed them to voice out the challenges
the farmers and fishermen were going through in the Kukawa local government
area of the State.
“It was around 3pm that the attack occured, and it was around 5pm that
the survivors reached us. We used boat to ferry them to a safer place together
with the help from the military. About 200 of them that escaped were rescued.
They told us that over 40 of them were killed. They are mostly fishermen and
crop farmers,” said the CJTF member.
Dumba community is about 7km to the popular Baga fishing community where
a large scale of fishing takes place due to the riverine nature of the local
government area which borders Republic of Chad.
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