In Nigeria, suspected Boko Haram militants killed 18 people in country’s northeast yesterday. The attack on the town, which sits on the border with Cameroon, is the latest in a string of deadly Boko Haram raids and bombings that have undermined the Nigerian military’s statements that the insurgency is all but defeated. According to local witnesses and officials, the latest in an escalating number of lethal attacks in the region.
A community leader and a local member of a vigilante group said, the knife-wielding attackers, moving under cover of night, targeted people in the town of Banki, 130 km southeast of the city of Maiduguri in Borno state, the epicentre of the eight-year conflict with Boko Haram.
According to the United Nations, Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency has left at least 20,000 dead and sparked one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, with tens of thousands already in famine-like conditions.
Some 8.5 million people in the worst affected parts of northeast Nigeria are now in need of some form of humanitarian assistance, with 5.2 million people lacking secure access to food, the UN has said.
