ICC Note: Boko Haram continues to devastate northern Nigeria with suicide bombings, kidnapping and rape. Throughout their seven-year insurgency, they’ve murdered upwards of 20,000 people, especially targeting Christians and pastors, having destroyed at least 13,000 churches. They have also become notorious for abducting Christian women and forcibly converting them to Islam, subjecting them to sexual slavery. The following report shows the faces of survivors after living through devastation.
By Thomas Page
4/16/16 Maiduguri, Nigeria (CNN) – Fati Abubakar knew something was wrong when a local preacher started to draw larger crowds with his outspoken rhetoric.
The place was Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno State, and the man in question was Mohammed Yusuf, the late leader of Boko Haram.
Eight years on and the militant Islamist cell has become the deadliest terror group in the world. Boko Haram has unleashed wave after wave of brutal attacks across northern Nigeria, bombing schools, churches and mosques, kidnapping women and children and assassinating politicians and religious leaders alike.
In 2014, the last available year of figures, Boko Haram was responsible for 6,644 deaths according to the Global Terrorism Index. It was a number widely reported, but it only tells a fraction of the story.
Abubakar is doing her best to make up for that.
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