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A Brutal Attack By Islamist Group Boko Haram In Nigeria Has Killed As Many As 86 People

They also burned scores of children alive.

By Sadho Ram — 02 Feb 2016, 03:10 PM

Cover image via AFP

"They came in through the bush, some of them riding on motorcycles and some in cars," a resident of Dalori, in Nigeria's violent northeast, told Channels Television while describing how he watched Boko Haram terrorists set fire to the village of Dalori and shoot people who attempted to flee. Total of 86 people were killed.

A woman mourns the death of her husband after Boko Haram attacked Dalori in Nigeria .

Image via AFP/Getty

As the New York Times notes, it was a particularly brutal raid, the kind that had become rare in recent months. Dozens of homes were burned to the ground. Children were abducted and carried off into the bush. People seeking refuge under a familiar tree were blown up by female suicide bombers who had infiltrated their ranks.

The wreckage of Dalori. The militants set fire to as many as 300 homes in the village, burning people alive.

Image via Jossy Ola/Associated Press

The attack happened on 31 January, right after evening prayers

According to an eyewitness survivor - who hid in a tree to escape the attack - the terrorists set fire to the village of Dalori and shot people attempting to flee in the country’s north-east on Saturday evening.

Alamin Bakura said the shootings and burnings continued for four hours and he had lost several of his own family members in the attack. The violence then continued as 3 female suicide bombers followed the survivors who had fled to the neighbouring village of Gamori before blowing themselves up - killing many more people.

Soldiers said that dozens of charred corpses and bodies with bullet wounds littered the streets in the village just three miles from Maiduguri - the birthplace of Boko Haram and the scene of a bomb attack by the group which killed at least 80 people in December.

Survivours described in gruesome detail the attack

Alamin Bakura, one of those who survived, told the Associated Press the militants firebombed huts, and that he could hear the screams of children who were burned to death. The AP, citing witnesses and soldiers at the village, put the toll at 86.

Other news organizations reported a lower toll: Reuters said at least 65 people were killed and AFP put the number of dead at 50.

Children stand near the rubble of a burnt house after Boko Haram attacks at Dalori village.

Image via STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

Boko Haram, which has marauded across northern Nigeria for years, killing about 20,000 civilians, burning entire villages and kidnapping hundreds of women and girls, has been attacking soft targets, increasingly with suicide bombers, since the military last year drove them out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria

Nigeria and its neighbors have struck back, chasing the militants out of villages they had seized. The military campaign has been so effective, according to Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, that he recently declared the group “technically” defeated. His key evidence: the military had reclaimed territory from fighters in northern Nigeria roughly the size of the state of Maryland.

Even so, the group has launched attacks at a relentless pace across northern Nigeria and neighboring countries in recent weeks, including an assault in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, in late December. But its recent attacks, while deadly, have been relatively simple, carried out by suicide bombers who often hide explosives under religious gowns or in bags of vegetables. Mr. Buhari’s supporters cite the tactic as evidence that the group is grasping for relevance after being scattered by the military.

Then, over the weekend, the group appeared to go back to its old playbook: storming a town with multiple fighters and leaving a path of destruction.