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Boko Haram targets villages as army sweeps cities

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Facing a crackdown by the military  in cities, Islamist militants are targeting villages in the northeast,  killing about 160 people this year alone in Borno State and signalling  there’s no respite in their five-year-old insurgency.In one of the latest assaults, suspected  members of the Boko Haram group killed 39 people on February 11 when  they attacked a police station, houses and mosques in Konduga, about 38  kilometres  southeast of the Borno State capital. Last month, 85 people  died in an attack on Kawuri village that destroyed 300 houses and shops.Since President Goodluck Jonathan  imposed a state of emergency on Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states last May,  the military has claimed to have knocked back Boko Haram which is  fighting to impose Sharia. Boko Haram started its violent campaign after  its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, died in police custody in July 2009.Boko Haram has not carried out an attack  on a high-profile metropolitan target since 2011 when it bombed the  United Nations building  in Abuja and a church at Suleja near  the  federal capital.Violence has eased too in Maiduguri, a city of about 1 million people that was the birthplace of Boko Haram, residents say. ”The state of emergency declaration has  brought about relative peace to Maiduguri and neighbouring communities,  but all that is at the expense of vulnerable villages which now suffer  frequent attacks from suspected Boko Haram members,” said Aisha  Abububakar, a 42-year-old tailor in Maiduguri.The US, which designated Boko Haram a  “terrorist’’ organization in November, said that during the attack on  Konduga the insurgents kidnapped young women from two schools in the  area. The Federal  Government should ensure that those abducted during  the raid “are safely returned to their families and bring the  perpetrators to justice as soon as possible,” the US Embassy said   yesterday  in a statement.The military claims to have killed at  least 150 militants in three major pushes in Borno State since December  20,

including a January 9 shootout in which 38 rebels died.Colonel Muhammad Dole, the military  spokesman in Borno, said the army plans to press ahead with its strategy  of chasing the militants in an effort to smash the insurgency.Security forces have “intensified combat  patrols on major roads and around vulnerable towns and villages,” Dole  said in a telephone interview.Ground attacks, backed by air support,  have forced some insurgents over the borders into Chad, Cameroon and  Niger, Air Force Squadron Leader Chris Erondu said in an e-mailed  statement on February 5.In Adamawa State, which borders Borno, nine soldiers were killed in a gunfight with Boko Haram members on Thursday.More than 10,000 Nigerians have fled  into Cameroon and Niger, the United Nations Refugee Agency said last  month. Hundreds more are moving to the  south .As the attacks spreads in the  countryside, isolated villages in Borno such as Gwoza, where a roadside  bomb killed at least seven people last month, are bearing the brunt of  the violence.“Residents of Gwoza and other nearby  villages have been living in great fear of any possible attacks by  members of the Boko Haram sect,” said Mohammed Musa, a farmer who  travels to Maiduguri to sell his beans.“These terrorists have continued to attack our villages killing innocent people,” he said.

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