Boko Haram kills 56 fishermen in Baga

A typical fish market scene on a quiet day in Baga town (Photo by Blogger) 

By Blogger

Gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram members on Friday slaughtered 48 fishermen and drowned eight others while they were returning from a fishing expedition in Doron-Baga village in Baga district of Kukawa local government area, Borno State, security sources and witnesses said.

The Islamists, who were said to have ambushed the unsuspecting fishermen, were in no hurry as they used their knives to behead them one after the other, and those who resisted were bound hands and feet and dumped into the river to drown.

An official of the Nigeria Vigilante Group, Muhammed Abbas Gava, confirmed this incident to this Blogger on phone.

“According to the reports we have so far received from our members in Baga, the slaughtered fishermen were returning from a fishing expedition they set out for on Thursday night,” said Gava.

“The gunmen forced them off their boats, and, at gunpoint, began to slaughter them one after the other. They slaughtered 48 of them – our members found their corpses near the river, while the corpses of eight   others whose necks had bruises were found floating near the river bank.”

The vigilante official said the corpses of those found in the river “were those whom the Boko Haram terrorists’ knives could not pierce through their skins, so they had to tie their legs and hands with ropes, then dropped them into the river to die.”

A chieftain of the Fish Traders Association at Lake Chad Basin area, Alhaji Gamandi Abubakar, who also confirmed the incident to journalists on phone, described the incident “as the most bestial of all massacres I have ever witnessed.”

This Blogger gathered from sources in the stricken community that they had earlier received a threat letter purportedly written to them by the insurgent group to the effect that it would attack the town soon.

Doro-Baga, an isolated fishing settlement located near Baga town around the Chad Basin of Nigeria-Cameroon border, had suffered similar attacks from the Islamic sect.

This Blogger recalls that about 20 fishermen were similarly slaughtered by the insurgents in May last year in the same fishing locality. In sympathy, the Borno State government had donated N250, 000 to each of the bereaved families.

Major fish traders say that 90 percent of Nigeria’s stock fish supplied from the northern to southern Nigeria come from Doron-Baga village.