By Jibrin Baba Ndace
Abuja
Additional number of Boko Haram fighters were killed by the military early yesterday as they tried to seize the city of Maiduguri and Konduga town in Borno state, a security source said.
This was in continuation of coordinated ground and air mop-up activities by military personnel in the aftermath of the terrorist group’s diversionary attacks on the two towns, the source added.
The source stated that at least 53 more militants were killed as they fled the scenes of the Sunday and early Monday clashes.
Soldiers also “engaged … their additional reinforcements in the outskirts of Konduga and Maiduguri in a battle Sunday night/early Monday morning.”
The source added: “Health and emergency workers are having hectic challenges in evacuating terribly mangled corpses of the terrorists for mass burial.”
A tweet on the Twitter handle of the Defence Headquarters disclosed that a substantial number of heavy weapons have been captured, “in addition to the number of terrorists that died in the night fighting till Monday’s morning.”
It added that “Nigerian forces also recorded some casualty” and that “troops and Air Force patrols are still ongoing.”
A public relations outfit, PRNigeria, yesterday quoted military sources saying the attempt by the terrorits to seize Maiduguri and Konduga “might have been staged to divert troops’ attention from their goal of commencing the ‘once and for all’ battle against the terrorists by members of the Multinational Joint Task Force from Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad planned for early this week.”
It added: “There are fears that saboteurs among local sympathizers in one of the affected communities might have betrayed the troops, especially concerning the plans to annihilate terrorists to pave way for the success and peaceful conduct of forthcoming elections in every part of the country.”