Maiduguri - Nigerian soldiers blanketed the town of Bama on
Wednesday, where residents stayed indoors after co-ordinated assaults by
heavily armed Islamist insurgents killed 55 people.
The military said the brazen raid was carried out by at
least 200 gunmen from the extremist group Boko Haram, who stormed the town in a
convoy of buses and 4x4 trucks, armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled
grenades.
Disguised in army uniforms, the insurgents broke into a
prison, killed 14 guards and set free 105 inmates, the military in north-eastern
Borno state said.
They attacked a police station, killing 22 officers, while
13 Islamists, four civilians and two soldiers were also reported to have lost their
lives in the assaults that paralysed the trading town.
"Only a few people have ventured beyond their front
doors," said Bama resident Musa Bra. "Troops are all over the town
patrolling the streets."
He explained that many people fled to the bush after the
pre-dawn attack on Tuesday.
While some have tried to return, the military is screening
everyone entering the town and asking for proof that they are civilians and not
members of the insurgent group which has become notorious for blending in with
the local population, Bra further said.
"Everybody is indoors," said another resident who
asked that his name be withheld. "It is just military all over the
town."
An AFP journalist who visited Bama on Tuesday said shops,
petrol stations and markets had shuttered, and there were burnt vehicles by the
roadside.
Borno state is a Boko Haram stronghold and has seen scores
of attacks since the group re-launched its insurgency in 2009.
Brutal clashes
But the violence has intensified in recent weeks.
Last month in the town of Baga, northeast of Bama and also
in Borno state, brutal clashes between Boko Haram and Nigerian troops killed
nearly 200 people, the deadliest-ever episode in the insurgency.
Soldiers have been accused of causing scores of deaths by
deliberately setting fire to much of the town, a charge the military has
fiercely denied.
The authorities have voiced increasing concern that Boko
Haram has fostered closer ties with other extremist groups operating in the
region, including al-Qaeda's North Africa affiliate.
The military has also suggested that the Islamist radicals
carrying out the attacks in north-eastern Borno include both Nigerians as well
as foreign fighters, who have crossed the porous borders with Chad and Niger.
But as President Goodluck Jonathan's administration has
sought to portray the conflict as international, he has faced mounting pressure
to come up with a domestic solution.
He tasked a group of northern, mainly Muslim leaders with
trying to strike an amnesty deal with the insurgents, but there are doubts as
to whether Boko Haram is open to such a pact.
The group has said it is fighting to create an Islamic state
in predominately Muslim northern Nigeria, but its demands have shifted
repeatedly.
Analysts and Western governments have urged Nigeria to
address crippling poverty in the north, saying dejected youths frustrated with
government corruption have been radicalised and are now fighting alongside the
insurgents.
The north is considered poorer than the mostly Christian
south, but poverty remains endemic across the country, Africa's most populous
and top oil producer.
