Nigerian refugees in the border with Chad are telling harrowing stories of the large-scale murder of unarmed civilians committed by members of the terrorist organisation Boko Haram when they attacked the town of Baga and its surrounding villages on January 3.
According to one survivor, Boko Haram entered their village at four in the morning of January 3. They gathered up the men in the village and herded them into the field where they were shot at "point blank range."
"We walked to a field and they told everyone to lie face down on the ground... After firing in the air once, they started shooting us," the survivor said in an interview with The Guardian. "Then I realised that the bullet had missed my head and had gone through my arm and the back of my thigh. But around me everyone was dead."
He survived by laying still and pretending to be dead. He was taken by a passing motorcyclist to the lake, from which he escaped by canoe to the Chadian border.
Idriss Dezeh, a refugee worker in Chad, told The Guardian that the stories are "too hard to listen to."
"The other day a man arrived to be registered but he didn't seem to hear anything I was saying to him. Then he started to cry. Boko Haram threw a grenade into his house, killing his wife and his three children," Dezeh said.
Thousands of Nigerians have fled the country and across the border with Chad, The Guardian reported. According to Mamadou Dian Balde, who works at the local United Nations refugee agency, more than 14,000 people since the start of January have fled from Baga and its surrounding areas to Chad to escape the violence of the terrorist group.
According to The Sun, Boko Haram also attempted to capture the city of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria on Sunday, January 25, less than 24 hours after capturing the town of Monguno. While government forces were overwhelmed and defeated by the militants in Monguno, the Nigerian Army succeeded in repelling the Boko Haram assault in Maiduguri. Concerns remain, however, that Boko Haram will try again to take the city.
