Boko Haram kills at least 70 people in Nigeria

At least 70 people were killed in Nigeria after an attack by the Islamist group Boko Haram on a village in northeastern Borno state, the main stronghold of the Jihadist insurgency, military sources said Wednesday. Men on motorcycles and armed with AK-47s invaded the village of Faduma Koloram in Borno state at midday yesterday, setting fire to their homes and stealing more than 1,000 cattle, a security source told The Cable on condition of anonymity.

"They accused the local people of spying on them and promised to teach them a lesson. Literally all the houses in the village were burned down," continues this same source, who argues as a pretext for the attack the alleged exchange of information between residents and security forces.

Boko Haram was created in 2002 in the town of Maiduguri (northeast Nigeria) by the spiritual leader Mohameh Yusuf with the purpose of denouncing the abandonment to which the authorities had subjected an outcast and impoverished north of the country. At the time he was only attacking the Nigerian police, representing the state, but since Yusuf was shot down by agents in 2009 the group has become more radical and started a bloody campaign to impose an Islamic state. Since then, northeastern Nigeria - and in recent years the areas of Cameroon, Chad and

Niger that border the Lake Chad Basin in turn - have been living under a double Jihadist threat.
In the last decade both Boko Haram, and later its break-up the Islamic State in the West African province (ISWAP), have killed more than 27,000 people and displaced about three million from their homes, according to UN data.