Originally published on September 1, 2013
Twenty-four vigilantes were killed in Monguno in Borno State in northeast Nigeria when their group was ambushed by Boko Haram militants dressed in army uniforms on Friday (August 30), a member of the group said.
Masta Moh'd, one of the youth vigilantes who was not present during the attack, told Reuters, "They were ambushed even before they got to the Boko Haram camps." Moh'd said he heard accounts of the ambush from from several of the survivors.
Reuters reports, "He said more than 100 of the vigilantes had participated in the raid, which turned sour when the insurgents, seen as the main security threat to Africa's top energy producer, ambushed them as they entered the town's outskirts.
"A member of the government's mixed military and police Joint Task Force, who declined to be named, confirmed the death toll from the incident as 24.
"A concerted military crackdown on Boko Haram ordered by President Goodluck Jonathan in mid-May had appeared to have weakened the sect, but they have repeatedly proved masters at going into hiding then coming back just as deadly as before.
"The use of civilian militia - often armed with no more than clubs and knives - as a weapon against the Islamists has led to the arrest of hundreds of them, the military says.
"That civilian backlash against Boko Haram has handed the military its greatest advantage over the insurgency in the four years it has been active. It has also made the vigilantes and their families prime targets for the Islamists.
"Scores have been killed in revenge attacks.
"The military said this month that Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau may have died in late July of wounds inflicted during a fire fight with them, although they gave no evidence.
"If he is dead, it appears not to have quelled the violence, which is on the rise since the start of the month."
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