Boko Haram Kill 27, Torch 300 Homes In Borno

[Shola Sholaz]

Islamist insurgents last week killed 27 people and wounded a dozen others in restive northeast Nigeria, a local official said Monday, with the attack happening two days before a deadly ambush on a wedding party.
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The attack was carried out by some 70 gunmen who stormed the town of Bama in Borno state late Thursday in a convoy of motorcycles and pickup trucks, said Baba Shehu, of the area's local government.
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"They shot down 27 persons and injured 12...
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About 300 houses were burnt," he told journalists in Borno's capital Maiduguri, where Boko Haram was founded more than a decade ago.
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Bama and other remote parts of northeast Nigeria have seen a series of brutal attacks in recent weeks which have left hundreds dead, despite official assurances that the insurgents have been weakened by an ongoing military offensive.
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Details of massacres in Borno have typically been slow to emerge.
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The mobile phone network in the area has been switched off since May, when President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency across the northeast and launched the military operation aimed at crushing at the Islamists' four-year uprising.