Suspected Boko Haram fighters abducted dozens
of boys and men from remote Nigeria village last
Sunday, witnesses say.
Suspected Boko Haram fighters have abducted
dozens of boys and men in a raid on a remote
village in northeast Nigeria, loading them onto
trucks and driving them off, witnesses who fled
the violence said .
Several witnesses who arrived as refugees in the
city of Maiduguri told Reuters news agency on
Friday that the fighters had also killed six older
men in last Sunday's raid on the village of Doron
Baga, in which several houses were burned .
As many as 97 people are unaccounted for , the
villagers said .
The kidnappings come four months after Boko
Haram, which is fighting to reinstate a medieval
Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Nigeria,
abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from the
village of Chibok .
"They left no men or boys in the place; only
young children , girls and women , " said Halima
Adamu, sobbing softly and looking exhausted
after a 180 km road trip on the back of a truck
to the northern city of Maiduguri .
"They were shouting 'Allah Akbar ' (God is
greatest), shooting sporadically. There was
confusion everywhere . They started parking our
men and boys into their vehicles , threatening to
shoot whoever disobey them . Everybody
was scared . "
Boko Haram , seen as the number one security
threat to Africa's top economy and oil producer ,
has dramatically increased attacks on civilians
in the past year , and the once -grassroots
movement has rapidly lost popular support as
it gets more blood thirsty .
Its solution - kidnapping boys and forcing them
to fight and abducting girls as sex slaves - is
chilling echo of Uganda 's Lord 's Resistance Army,
which has operated in the same way in Uganda ,
South Sudan and central Africa for decades .
The military did not respond to a request for
comment. A security source said they were aware
of the incident but were still investigating the
details .
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