Boko Haram Attacks Kill 23 In Borno, Kano …Mali Crisis: JTF Set For Increased Attack

Gunmen killed 23 people in Borno and Kano States in attacks that appeared to target gamblers and people selling ‘forbidden’ meat that Islamist militants disapprove of, officials and locals said on Tuesday.
In the deadliest attack, late on Monday, gunmen opened fire at a market in the town of Damboa, Borno State targeting local hunters who sell bush meat from animals such as monkeys and pigs, which strict Muslims are forbidden to eat, a local official said.
“Gunmen suspected to be members of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, came to the town market and shot dead 13 local hunters on the spot while five others died from their injuries at the hospital,” Alhaji Abba Ahmed said. “They came to the market in a Volkswagen Golf car, carried out the operation and left,” he added.
In a separate attack in the north’s biggest city of Kano, some 500 km (310 miles) west of Damboa, on Tuesday, suspected Boko Haram members riding on motorbikes shot dead five people playing an outdoor board game, witnesses and a hospital source who received the bodies said. Two others were wounded.
Damboa is in the remote northeast, the sect’s heartland near the borders with Niger, Cameroon and Chad.
Boko Haram wants to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria, a country of 170 million people split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims. The insurgency is seen as the top security threat to Africa’s leading oil and gas producer.
Nigeria has already commenced the deployment of around 1,200 troops as part of a West African intervention force to combat Islamist militants occupying the north of Mali, and officials fear Nigeria’s involvement could further inflame the insurgency.
Meanwhile, Nigeria has boosted security on its borders in anticipation of increased attacks by Boko Haram militants after it sent troops to help expel Islamists from northern Mali, a military spokesman said.
“If they’re part of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, if they’re in support of the northern Mali crisis, there’s every possibility that they will heighten their attacks,” Director of Information Defense Ministry, Colonel Mohammed Yerima, said yesterday in an interview in Abuja.
“On our own side, we’re strategising how to counter them.”
Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer and most populous nation, is battling an insurgency by Boko Haram Islamists that has killed hundreds of people since 2009.
The group, whose name means “Western education is a sin,” has carried out bomb and gun attacks in the mainly Muslim north and Abuja.
Nigeria is contributing 1,200 troops to join France and soldiers from other West African countries in Mali to recapture territory lost to Islamist militants and ethnic Touareg separatists.
The crisis may spill into Nigeria if not brought under control, President Goodluck Jonathan told the National Assembly members on January 17, while seeking their support of plans to send Nigerian troops to Mali.
Gunmen opened fire at a convoy of soldiers in the central Nigerian Kogi State January 19 as they were on their way to join the West African Force in Mali, leaving two dead, the army said on January 20.