Boko Haram beheads four IDPs

Four internally displaced persons, IDPs, in Dalori-1 Camp of Maiduguri, Borno State, have been beheaded by the Boko Haram, PREMIUM TIMES learnt.

They were reportedly beheaded while hunting outside the camp on Saturday.

The four victims were on Sunday buried by their fellow displaced persons.

Two other IDPs who were among a 12-man hunting troop were yet to be accounted for on Sunday evening.

It took a search team to find the four beheaded bodies some few kilometres from the Dalori camp along the Maiduguri-Bama road.

Sources familiar with the incident said the attacked IDPs who were also volunteer members of the local vigilante, Civilian-JTF, often go to the bush to hunt for games which they either cook to beef up their protein needs or sell to earn some cash.

It was supposed to be another normal hunting day for the 12 men on Saturday, but unfortunately, they ran into a gang of Boko Haram insurgents who attacked and beheaded four of them.

“Six of the IDP hunters managed to run back late afternoon of Saturday to inform us at the camp that they were attacked by Boko Haram fighters”, said an IDP from Bama who identified himself as Alai Goni.

“When we waited for the six others to return and they did not, we decided to go in search for them. About 6km away from the camp, we came to a riverbank and we saw a man watering his horse. The man simply pointed to us where the corpses of the four slain men were dumped. We became suspicious of him and we had to arrest him and bring him to the security personnel at the gate of Dalori-1 camp.

“Unfortunately, we could not immediately find the decapitated heads of three of them; we only found three bodies without their heads, while the fought one whose head was not separated from his body, had some kind of sharp word forcefully driven into his forehead.”

The source said the heads of the four beheaded persons were later found early Sunday morning, after which they were prepared for burial at about 9 a.m.

“Unfortunately, we have not heard from the other two missing IDPs and we are not sure if they are still alive or dead”, he said.

Dalori camp is about 1.5km from the University of Maiduguri that has been a target for Boko Haram suicide bombers in the past weeks.

The leader of the Civilian-JTF, Abba Kalli, who also confirmed the incident, blamed the victims for embarking on such “dangerous expedition”, after they had been severally warned that it was dangerous for them to wander away from the camp.

“It was indeed a sad occurrence for us yesterday,” he said.

“Four of them were beheaded; two were captured and taken away, while the rest six managed to escape. We have severally warned them going even 2km kilometres away from their camps in that axis is very dangerous because the Boko Haram insurgents were there in the bush. But they refused to heed to warning, by insisting on going to hunt in the bush”.

“They have been buried according to the Islamic rite this morning,” said Kalli who confirmed that the slain victims were all IDPs from Bama who later volunteered to be members of the Civilian-JTF.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered from sources at the camp that the slain persons were named Wali Fanne, Ibrahim, Chacha, and Baba Karemi.

Residents living around the camp, have expressed concern over the increasing attacks around Maiduguri, as they called on the state government and security operatives to increase surveillance in that part of the Borno capital that is increasingly becoming porous for Boko Haram attacks.

Neither the police nor the military has issued any statement on the latest incident.

The Boko Haram insurgency has caused about 100,000 deaths since 2009.