Boko Haram gunmen on Tuesday attacked Konduga town in Borno State, killing 53 persons. They also abducted 25 teenage girls and set fire on many houses in the town.
Konduga is a town along Maiduguri-Bama Road and is about 40 kilometres from the state capital, Maiduguri.
The gunmen attacked the only hospital in the town, abducted the medical doctor and carted away drugs and medical equipment.
They also destroyed the town’s central mosque, the palace of the district head, the market and the Abba Ashigar School of Business and Administrative Studies with explosives.
However, residents of the town claimed that over 100 people were killed during the attack, adding that many corpses were still in the bush surrounding the community.
The Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, who visited the town on Wednesday, broke down in tears during the funeral prayer organised for 33 victims of the attack.
It was learnt that few hours before Shettima’s arrival at the town, 18 corpses had already been buried at the Madarari area of Konduga.
Our correspondent saw two other corpses lying unattended to in one of the streets of the town.
Residents were also seen fleeing the troubled town when the governor visited.
The insurgents were alleged to have torched about 80 per cent of the buildings in the town during Tuesday attack that eyewitnesses said lasted between 4pm and 8pm.
The insurgents, who were over 200, according to eyewitnesses, stormed the town at 4pm in 39 Toyota Hilux vehicles, armed with sophisticated weapons including rocket propelled grenades (RPGS), assault rifles and explosive devices.
Some of the residents of the town, who claimed that the soldiers and the volunteer youth vigilance group were overpowered by the insurgents, lamented that they were left at the mercy of the assailants.
“They killed our people at will and destroyed our houses with explosives,” one of the residents told journalists.
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