ICC Note:
Last year, Boko Haram, a radical Islamic insurgency bent on establishing a separate Islamic state to be ruled by Sharia law, killed as many 1,800 Christians and destroyed as few as 200 churches. In a tragic start to 2015, Boko Haram has committed mass-atrocities against the Nigerian people, including Christians across the West African nation’s increasingly Islamic north.
01/27/2015 Nigeria (ABC) – Scores of people have been killed and many others forced to flee to the mountains following a renewed series of Boko Haram raids in Nigeria, officials say.
The attacks by the Islamists targeted the Michika area in north-eastern Adamawa state, where bodies reportedly littered the streets in several villages.
The bloodshed in north-east Nigeria has reached unprecedented levels in recent weeks, raising questions about security for general elections set for February 14.
The head of a European Union election monitoring mission, Santiago Fisas, said staff deployed to observe polling in Africa’s most populous country would not even attempt to travel to the north-east.
Separately, police in the north-eastern town of Potiskum said they had arrested a bomb-maker linked to several recent Boko Haram suicide attacks – a welcome development for Nigeria’s security services which have struggled to protect civilians.
Adamu Kamale, who represents the Michika district in the Adamawa state government, also in the north-east, said Boko Haram gunmen had been going “door-to-door, killing people, including the old” for the past two weeks.
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