Abuja, Jan 14 (IANS) Nigerian authorities on Tuesday organised a mass burial for at least 40 farmers suspected to have been killed by insurgents during an attack earlier this week in the northeastern state of Borno, which borders Chad.
The farmers were killed late Sunday when a group of insurgents rounded scores of them up and shot them dead in Dumba, a farming community on the shores of Lake Chad, according to a statement issued Monday by Usman Tar, the Commissioner for Information in Borno.
While confirming that an initial report indicated about 40 farmers were killed and the whereabouts of many who escaped the attack were being traced for a reunion with their families, Tar said the government suspected the Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) were behind the attack.
A top security source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Xinhua news agency that at least 40 bodies of the slain farmers had been recovered, and a mass burial had been conducted Tuesday morning at an undisclosed location in Borno.
The source said more casualties were likely, as the insurgents rounded up over 70 farmers, separating women and children from the men’s group, during the attack.
Zagazola Makama, a counterterrorism expert based in the Lake Chad region, told Xinhua that the farmers had earlier negotiated and paid “security levies” to an ISWAP faction to gain access to the farmlands, but soon after, another faction of the group, reportedly unaware of the arrangement, attacked and killed the farmers.
According to the local Business Day newspaper, in many parts of northern Nigeria, farmers and other residents are forced to pay levies or taxes to terrorist groups or bandits in exchange for permission to access their lands or protection from attacks.
Despite government military interventions, armed attacks have been a primary security threat in northern and central Nigeria, often leading to deaths and kidnappings.
–IANS
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