#News: Militants Attack Nigerian Villages Despite Reported Boko Haram Cease-Fire

[HuffingtonPost]

By Lanre Ola                

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Suspected Boko Haram  militants have killed dozens of people in five attacks on  Nigerian villages that occurred after the government announced a  ceasefire to enable 200 abducted girls to be freed, security  sources and witnesses said on Saturday.                

However, the government cast doubt on whether the attacks  really were Boko Haram or one of several criminal groups that  are exploiting the chaos of the insurgency. A spokesman said  talks to free the girls would continue in Chad on Monday.                

The fresh attacks dashed hopes for an easing of the  northeast's violence, although officials remained confident they  can negotiate the release of girls whose abduction by the rebels  in the remote northeastern town of Chibok in April caused  international shock and outrage.                

A presidency and another government source said they were  aiming to do this by Tuesday.                

Boko Haram, whose name translates roughly as "Western  education is sinful," has massacred thousands in a struggle to  carve an Islamic state out of religiously mixed Nigeria, whose  southern half is mainly Christian in faith.                

Nigeria's armed forces chief Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh  announced the ceasefire on Friday. On Saturday,  two senior government sources said it aims to secure the girls'  release as early as Monday or Tuesday, although they declined to  give further details.                

In the first attack, suspected insurgents attacked the  village of Abadam on Friday night, killing at least one person  and ransacking homes, while another assault on the village of  Dzur on Saturday morning left at least eight people dead.                

Three other attacks in Adamawa state on Saturday killed  dozens of people, witnesses and a local politician said.                

"I was just boarding a bus when the gunshots started," Adams  Mishelia, who was in the adjacent town of Shaffa, said of the  Dzur attack. "People were fleeing into the bush, so I got off  the bus and headed to the bush too. I later learned they  slaughtered eight people."                

A security source confirmed that attack and the assault on  Abadam the night before. Mohammed Bulama, a resident of the main  northeastern city of Maiduguri, told Reuters he lost his uncle  in the Abadam attack. Other casualties there were unclear.                

On Saturday suspected insurgents also attacked three small  towns in a local government area called Michika, Adamawa state.                

"Dozens of people are been killed and houses are been burnt  by the insurgents, so what is the meaning of the ceasefire  government is talking about?" said Adamu Kamale, a state  government lawmaker.                                

"DISCUSSIONS IN CHAD"                

When asked about the violence, government spokesman Mike  Omeri said by telephone that "the Boko Haram people have also  said that some attacks are not undertaken by them."                

Boko Haram, seen as the biggest threat to Africa's top  economy and oil producer, is believed to be divided into several  factions that loosely cooperate with each other, and it is  unclear with which faction the government has been negotiating.                

"Discussions will continue in Chad next week, and on the  basis of those discussions we'll have more details," on how the  girls will be released, Omeri said.                

The announcement of the truce came a day before a rally of  supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja attended by  his vice president, Namadi Sambo, although an expected  announcement of Jonathan's candidacy for February 2015 elections  did not materialize during the rally.                

Officials at the presidency and military did not immediately  respond to requests for comment.                

Boko Haram has also not yet commented on the reported truce.  The group's sole means of conveying messages is via videotaped  speeches by a man claiming to be Abubakar Shekau, its leader  whom the military last year said it had killed.                

A history of abortive government attempts at truce deals  with Boko Haram and military claims to have rescued some girls  that proved false, mean Nigerians are likely to greet the newly  reported breakthrough with skepticism.                

The second government source said: "We are negotiating with  considerable caution. Boko Haram has grown into such an  amorphous entity that any splinter group could come up disowning  the deal. (But) we believe we are talking to the right people."                

The talks were held with a formerly unknown militant called  Danladi Ahmadu, who says he is the group's "secretary general."                

Underlining the uncertainty over the chain of command in  Boko Haram, Nigeria's military said at the end of last month a  man who had been posing as Shekau in the group's growing number  of videos had been killed in clashes over the town of Konduga.                

The schoolgirls' abduction stunned the world, spurred a  global Twitter campaign to get them rescued and heaped pressure  on Jonathan's administration to do more to protect civilians in  the northeast where Boko Haram's insurgency is focused.                

Several rounds of negotiations with the jihadist movement  have been pursued in recent years but they have never yielded  calm, partly because of Boko Haram's internal divisions.                

Since the girls' kidnapping, the Nigerian military has twice  asserted that it rescued some or all of the girls, only to have  to backtrack hours later.                

At Saturday's rally in Abuja, many of President Jonathan's  supporters wrapped themselves in the white and green of  Nigeria's flag and sang and danced under a banner reading "We  Love You Goodluck Jonathan. Our support is 100 percent."                

Two candidates for the main opposition coalition, former  military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and ex-vice president Atiku  Abubakar, have declared their candidacy against Jonathan.      (Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Lagos, Camillus Eboh and  Felix Onuah in Abuja, and Imma Ande in Yola; Writing by Tim  Cocks; Editing by Rosalind Russell)
Source: huffingtonPost