Adam Nossiter
June 2, 2015
Boko Haram Steps Up Attacks in Northeast Nigeria, Killing Scores
DAKAR, Senegal — Less than a week after Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general, took over as Nigeria’s new president and vowed to crush Boko Haram, the group has intensified its attacks in the country’s northeast, killing scores in a series of assaults and suicide bombings.
Between 20 and 50 people were killed in the latest attack on Tuesday. A man disguised as a salesman blew himself up in a slaughterhouse in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State and the biggest city in the region, officials said.
Early Tuesday morning, residents at the city’s southern edge also awoke to the sound of exploding rocket-propelled grenades and automatic gunfire from the militants, and a similar attack took place late Saturday night near the airport, killing at least eight people.
Residents spoke of hearing heavy explosions for hours. Both attacks were repelled by soldiers stationed in the city. Beyond that, a suicide bombing at a mosque in Maiduguri on Saturday killed at least 23.
Officials in that city said Tuesday that they suspected that Boko Haram, a radical Islamist terrorist group, was responding to the frank declaration of war against the group by Mr. Buhari in his inaugural speech on Friday.
Indeed, a new video released on Tuesday, apparently from the group and monitored by the terrorism tracking group SITE, appeared to confirm that interpretation. According to SITE, a Boko Haram spokesman refutes claims by the Nigerian military that the group has been rolled back, insisting instead that Boko Haram retains control over substantial territory.
During his swearing-in on Friday, Mr. Buhari put the fight against Boko Haram at the top of his agenda. He was unsparing in a brief critique of the bungled war against it so far, and he declared that “Boko Haram is a mindless, godless group who are as far away from Islam as one can think of.”
Mr. Buhari’s speech signaled a sharp break from years of official denial, both of the gravity of the Boko Haram threat and of the Nigerian military’s considerable role in aggravating it through unchecked human rights abuses.
This week, the new president appeared to be backing up his speech with action, saying that the center of operations in the war against the terrorists would be moved from Nigeria’s distant capital, Abuja, to Maiduguri, answering a criticism frequently made of his predecessor’s military chiefs — that they were unwilling to get close to the line of fire and preferred the comforts of the capital to the front lines.
Mr. Buhari also announced that he would pay an immediate visit to neighboring Chad and Niger, whose armies have played a decisive role this year in pushing back Boko Haram.
The government of Mr. Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, by contrast, sought to minimize the role Nigeria’s neighbors have played in the fight against Boko Haram, and he denied altogether that South African mercenaries had been heavily involved.
“Buhari has sent a very strong signal to Boko Haram and the military that Boko Haram cannot continue killing innocent people, and the military cannot remain in faraway Abuja,” said Hussaini Monguno, the security adviser to the governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima.
Mr. Monguno blamed the military for failing to protect Maiduguri adequately after announcing several days ago, he said, that the city had been penetrated by “60 to 70 suicide bombers.”
The toll from the last few days of suicide blasts has been particularly heavy. In Tuesday’s bombing, the attacker used a cassette player to lure his victims.
The bomber was “playing Buhari’s campaign song, and people were carried away by it; they started dancing to it,” said Abba Mohammed Bashir Shuwa, another adviser to the governor. “They had confidence in him.”
Mr. Shuwa said the bomber was apparently known to many of his victims, butchers who worked at the slaughterhouse.
The assault on Maiduguri over the last few days is taking a toll on the city’s already frayed nerves, Mr. Shuwa said.
“For the past two days, throughout the night people are staying awake because of the attacks,” he said. “For the past two days, it’s always consistent: You start hearing gunshots, then grenades. People are very much scared.”
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