May 16, 2014
Members of a vigilante group in Madagali, a town in Adamawa State, have killed more than 70 Boko Haram members and and handed over seven captured militants to the police.
The vigilantes acted after they were tipped off by a local food vendor that the militants were coming to get food before heading out for a major operation to raid villages in the area, usually carried out at night.
The vigilant group mobilized, laid ambush and waited patiently for the militants, a source in the village disclosed. The source added that as soon as the Islamist insurgents numbering more than 100 showed up in the village to pick up their favorite meals, the vigilantes attacked them, killing most of them in a hail of bullets.
Today’s attack is the second time this week that local vigilantes would defeat the rampaging militants. The first time was two days ago when well-armed vigilantes in Kalabalge, Borno State, ambushed a squad of Boko Haram militants.
A security source told SaharaReporters that Nigerians resident in many remote areas of the Northeast seem to have decided that the best way to repel incessant attacks by murderous gangs of Boko Haram insurgents was to take matters into their own hands.
A vigilante member involved in today’s ambush told our local correspondent that Nigerian soldiers appear unable or unwilling to wage an effective war against the insurgents. “They (soldiers) seem to be helpless and to fear the Boko Haram warriors who terrorize us here. But we are not afraid. They are men like us. And we are tired of folding up our hands and allowing them to kill us, to kill our wives and to kill our children.” – SaharaReporters
