Fourteen months after, the remains of 81 victims of Boko Haram terrorists’ attack on Bama town in Bama Local Government Area of Borno State were yesterday exhumed and reburied according to Islamic rites.
The 81 bodies were among those killed and buried by Boko Haram terrorists at River Yadzeram in Bama, Borno State when the sect attacked and captured the town in September 2014.
Chairman of Bama Local Government Council, Alhaji Ali Gujja, who organised the burial rites in Bama town, confirmed that the 81 remains of Boko Haram victims were exhumed and reburied at a cemetery, according to Islamic rites. A military source from Bama said the remains, which comprised skeletons; bones and skulls were exhumed and collated along the riverbank by volunteers and some members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF).
Speaking with newsmen yesterday in Bama, Gujja said that the victims deserve a befitting burial. “We had no option than to exhume the 81 bodies that have been floating on the river, while others buried on the river banks for over a year, we have to look for volunteers and members of Civilian JTF last week to exhume the 81 bodies of the victims,” he said Gujja further stated that two wells in Bama town, used by the insurgents as a dumping ground for corpses, have been sealed off and fumigated to prevent outbreak of diseases in the town.
He said the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp is currently having over 6,000 people, comprising women and children. Meanwhile, 18 people were killed and 100 homes torched in an attack in the dead of night by Nigeria’s Boko Haram fighters on a village in southeastern Niger, local authorities told AFP yesterday.
“The toll is 18 dead, 11 hurt, almost 100 homes burned down” in the village of Wogom late Wednesday, the mayor of the nearby town of Bosso, Bako Mamadou, said. A humanitarian worker said the Islamists came from Nigeria and crossed the Komadougou Yobe River, the border between Niger and Nigeria. Armed jihadists and suicide bombers from Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist group have staged repeated attacks since February in Niger’s southeast Diffa region near Nigeria, leaving hundreds of people dead.
The United Nations has registered around 50 attacks and clashes between Islamist fighters and Niger troops since February.
The last came in late October when they shot dead 13 people in a village near Diffa. Some 150 schools with more than 12,000 pupils have been forced to close due to the attacks in the southeast.
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