40 farmers feared dead, several missing as terrorists attack Borno

…We were attacked because we engaged in farming – victim

No fewer than 40 farmers have been reprtedly killed, while the whereabouts of several others are yet to be ascertained as the terrorists believed to be members of Boko Haram and Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) attacked a Community in Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State.

Some residents of the area told BusinessDay that the terrorists stormed Kayakura Village in Doron Baga Ward at about 4 :30pm on Sunday evening with sophisticated weapons and rounded them up.

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One of the farmers, who escaped unhurt, said that the terrorists, before embarking on a shooting spree informed the victims that farming activities, which according to them are banned, had not been lifted in the area, hence the terrorists said that anyone found farming there henceforth would be killed.

“We are (sic) the people farming at Kayakura on Sunday, the terrorists came and met us in the area. They chased us out of the farm and said that they had not lifted the ban on farming in the area.

“We were farming together with those killed. The dead bodies that I counted were about 40 of them. The rest that were shot in the bush and those that escaped with gunshot wounds could not be accounted for”, the farmer who didn’t want his name disclosed, told BusinessDay.

Also, a community member who escaped the attack, but at the time of filing in the story was in Baga town, said such attacks on the farmers by the terrorists had been a recurring issue.

He added that the alarming rate of the present killings pushed them to speak out about the challenges the farmers and fishermen were going through in the Kukawa Local Government Area of the State.

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“It was around 4:30pm that the attack occured, and it was around 6pm that the survivors reached us. We used boat to ferry them to a safer place together with the help from the Military.

“About 200 of them that escaped were rescued. They told us that over 40 of them were killed. They are mostly fishermen and crop farmers”, another source said.