New facts have emerged about the rescue team that went out yesterday to both identify and bury bodies of victims of Boko Haram / ISWAP’s weekend attack on Dumba community in Borno, where several farmers and fishermen were killed.
Dumba, a small but highly fertile farming and fishing community, is situated at the shores of the Lake Chad, near Baga in Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno.
This paper has earlier reported that a rescue team, which involved community members, hunters, vigilantes and Civilian Joint Tasks Force that went out to recover dead bodies following the weekend’s attack, have not returned more than 24 hours after they went out.
‘Our youths in the community, along with local vigilantes, hunters and CJTF members who went to the bush on Tuesday to recover the dead bodies did not return home yet.
‘I cannot give you the total number of those that are still missing, and we don’t know their situation right now, I will update you,’ the source told our reporter earlier.
However, new facts available to Sahel Reporters News have now shown that the situation is even more tragic than previously appreciated as over 50 civilians who were in the team may have fallen victims of an ambush, yet again set up by the terrorists.
Our reporter learned that the rescue team ran into an ambush while burying (or on their way to bury) some of the recovered bodies.
The terrorists predicted that burial was going to follow the attack, and thus targeted the burial location to open fire on more people.
‘The soldiers in the team tried their best to repel the attack, but yet many did not return after the ambush,’ our latest source, who didn’t want to be named, said.
He said of the 54 civilians in the rescue team, only one so far returned.
The returnee, who our source relied on for this update, said ‘they were attacked while burying over 50 of the corpses they recovered.’
He added they could not bury at least 15 because of the ambush.
Community’s appeal
The source added that members of the community are appealing to the government to evacuate them to a safer location until security and order is restored.
The Government of Borno has earlier noted that the community members ventured into an area the military has marked to be still unsafe, which was part of the reasons leading to the attack.
While the community members also confirmed that, they added that they got access to the farmlands and fishing areas in the community after they paid certain ‘levies’ to the terrorists.
They, however, later fell out because the terrorists felt that the farmers and fishermen were giving out intelligence to the military about their locations and movements.
The attack was thus to ‘punish’ them for breaking the ‘pact’ of non-interference that existed between them.
Sahel Reporters News