ICC Note: Boko Haram is suspected of killing 20 on a road outsdie of Jingalta village, 45 miles north of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria. Reports suggest the militants were fleeing from the Nigerian military operation which saw a major victory against the Islamic group. Rather than escaping immediately, militants stopped to attack travelers, killing 20 and setting fire to their vehicles while looting whatever they could find. As the joint task force continues to push Boko Haram in an effort to defeat them by December, the terrorists continue to seek out soft targets, typically Christian and Muslim communities, by using young girls as suicide bombers.
10/22/2015 Kano, Nigeria (Al-Arabiya) – Twenty people were shot dead by suspected Boko Haram gunmen Wednesday on a road outside a village in Nigeria’s northeast Borno state, local sources said.
A large group of Boko Haram gunmen fleeing a military offensive on their camp in Nganzai district opened fire on four cars just outside Jingalta village, 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of Maiduguri, killing all 20 passengers inside, a vigilante and a villager said.
“We received information of an attack by Boko Haram gunmen on four cars near Jingalta village where they shot dead all 20 occupants of the vehicles before setting the cars ablaze,” Babakura Kolo, a member of a local vigilante group assisting the military in fighting the Islamist sect in Maiduguri, told AFP.
“The gunmen were fleeing a military operation against one of their enclaves in the area around 9:30 am (0830GMT) when they came across the vehicles on the highway and opened fire on them,” Kolo said.
The gunmen, who were driving pick-up trucks and motorcycles, then looted and burnt the entire village whose residents had already fled following the attack, he added.
Jibir Hassan, a commercial bus driver who arrived at the scene after the gunmen had fled, confirmed the death toll.
“When we arrived at Jingalta village, we found it smoldering, with everything completely burnt and just outside the village we saw bodies sprawled by the roadside, 20 of them in all,” Hassan told AFP.
