Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Boko Haram Kill 38 in Niger Republic
By PAUL ARHEWE WITH AGENCY REPORTS
Nigerian National Mirror
June 19, 2015

•Chadian warplanes bomb Islamist militantsgovernment’s

An attack by suspected Is­lamist Boko Haram fight­ers in Niger has killed at least 38 people, officials say.

It took place late on Wednes­day night, according to a secu­rity source quoted by the Reuters news agency.

Local MP Bulu Mammadu told the BBC that the victims includ­ed women and children who had been shot dead in two different villages.

Boko Haram is based in Nige­ria but is being tackled by a multi­national force, including soldiers from Niger.

On Monday, there was a sus­pected Boko Haram suicide attack in Chad, which is also supplying soldiers to the multina­tional force.

Meanwhile, Chad said yester­day its warplanes bombed Boko Haram positions in neighbouring Nigeria to avenge twin suicide bombings in the capital this week blamed on the jihadists.

The government also Wednes­day announced it was banning the burqa nationwide in a secu­rity clampdown following Mon­day’s attacks in N’Djamena that left 33 people dead and more than 100 wounded.

Chad’s military vowed it would continue its “merciless” pursuit of the Islamist insurgents “so that no drop of spilt Chadian blood goes unpunished”.

“In response to the cowardly and barbaric acts perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists… the armed forces carried out repri­sal air strikes on the terrorists’ positions in Nigerian territory on Wednesday,” the military said in a statement.

Six Boko Haram bases were destroyed in the air raids, which caused “considerable human and material losses”, it said, without giving further details.

Monday’s attacks on the po­lice headquarters and a police academy in N’Djamena were the first in the capital of the central African country, which has taken a lead role in a regional offensive against the Nigeria-based Boko Haram.

No group has claimed respon­sibility but Chad and its allies im­mediately blamed the insurgents, who have carried out a series of bloody attacks in border areas of countries that share a frontier with north-eastern Nigeria.

Chad also Wednesday banned the full-face Muslim veil and ordered se­curity forces to seize burqas from markets and burn them.

“Wearing the burqa must stop immediately from today, not only in public places and schools but throughout the whole of the country,” Prime Minister Kalzeu­be Pahimi Deubet told religious leaders the day before the start of the holy Muslim month of Rama­dan.

Any type of clothing that leaves only the eyes visible is a form of “camouflage” and is now banned, he added, asking reli­gious leaders to spread the mes­sage in mosques, churches and other holy places.

Deubet said security forces in the Muslim majority country had been instructed to “go into the markets and to seize all the burqas on sale and burn them”.

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