Amnesty International Nigeria researcher, Daniel Eyre, says, about 3,700 homes in two villages, Baga and Doron Baga were destroyed by the militants and that Boko Haram attacks, carried out in Baga last week is so far the deadliest. Continue...
“The Satellite
images released by Amnesty International on Wednesday provides indisputable and shocking
evidence of the scale of last week’s attack on the towns of Baga and Doron Baga
by Boko Haram militants. Before and after images of two neighbouring towns,
Baga (160 kilometres from Maiduguri) and Doron Baga (also known as Doro Gowon,
2.5 km from Baga), taken on 2 and 7 January show the devastating effect of the
attacks which left over 3,700 structures damaged or completely destroyed. Other
nearby towns and villages were also attacked over this period.
These detailed
images show devastation of catastrophic proportions in two towns, one of which
was almost wiped off the map in the space of four days. Of all Boko Haram
assaults analyzed by Amnesty International, this is the largest and most
destructive yet. It represents a deliberate attack on civilians whose homes,
clinics and schools are now burnt out ruins. The analysis shows just two of the
many towns and villages that fell victim to a series of Boko Haram attacks
which began on 3 January 2015.
In Baga, a densely populated town less than
two square kilometres in size, approximately 620 structures were damaged or
completely destroyed by fire. In Doron Baga over 3,100 structures were damaged
or destroyed by fire affecting most of the four square kilometre town. Many of
the wooden fishing boats along the shoreline, visible in the images taken on
the 2 January, are no longer present in the 7 January images tallying with eye
witnesses’ testimony that desperate residents fled by boat across Lake Chad.
Thousands of people have fled the violence across the border to Chad and to
other parts of Nigeria including Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. These
people are adding to the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people
and refugees, who have already stretched the capacity of host communities and
government authorities" the report said
The report
included accounts of some villagers who gave accounts about the attack. One man
who was interviewed said he saw a woman who was in labor attacked and killed
with her unborn child ripped from her stomach
"Half of the
baby boy is out and she died like this"the man said
Another said
“They killed so many people. I saw maybe around 100 killed at that time in
Baga. I ran to the bush. As we were running, they were shooting and killing.”he
said
Amnesty
International called on the Nigerian government to take all possible legal
steps to restore security in the north-east and ensure protections of
civilians.
“Up until now,
the isolation of the Baga combined with the fact that Boko Haram remains in
control of the area has meant that it has been very difficult to verify what
happened there. Residents have not been able to return to bury the dead, let
alone count their number. But through these satellite images combined with
graphic testimonies a picture of what is likely to be Boko Haram’s deadliest
attack ever is becoming clearer. This week, Nigeria’s Director of Defence
Information stated that the number of people killed in Baga including Boko
Haram fighters “has so far not exceeded about 150. These images, together
with the stories of those who survived the attack, suggest that the final death
toll could be much higher than this figure.” the report says
