Jihadi militants take 100s hostage in Nigeria
Barnabas Fund, 27 August 2020
22 trucks loaded with heavily armed jihadists thundered into a mainly-Christian town in north-eastern Nigeria, with the militants taking hundreds hostage on August 18th.
The Islamic State West Africa Province terrorist group, an off-shoot of Boko Haram, captured local people as they fled and launched an attack on a nearby military station protecting the town.
The 1,200 residents had only recently returned to their home town near the border with Lake Chad, after spending 2 years in refugee camps 120 miles to the south in the state capital.
The residents had returned full of hope to restart their lives and cultivate their farmlands “only to end up in the hands of the insurgents”.
Local government authorities had declared the town safe and ordered the residents to return under a military escort.
In the past two years, some two million internally displaced people (IDPs) have been repatriated to towns in the north-east. But many IDPs are wary that jihadists still have a foothold and it remains unsafe for them to return.