A vigilante group made up of residents of Kalabalge, a town in the north of Borno State, on Wednesday mounted a fierce resistance to a siege by members of Boko Haram, inflicting severe casualties on militants from the fringe Islamist sect.
Local officials who spoke to Al Jazeera said 41 insurgents were killed by the villagers
Residents disclosed that they had received advance information that Boko Haram’s death squads were on their way to wreak havoc in the community. “Once we got the information, we gathered many of our young men and positioned ourselves in surrounding bushes and forests. We were armed with bows and arrows, Dane guns and pump action rifles,” said a source.
“We killed many of them (Boko Haram members) today (Wednesday),” one of the residents of the town who took part in the battle told a correspondent of SaharaReporters.
The sources added that some 400 Boko Haram militants wearing army uniforms arrived in Kalabalge around 5 a.m. in two armoured tanks, eight Hilux pick-up vehicles, and seven sports utility vehicles (SUVS), all painted in Nigerian army colours according to eyewitnesses.
A security agent confirmed to SaharaReporters that the villagers killed several of the attackers and captured many of them, even though the rest of the terrorists scampered off into the bush and forests, some of them with injuries. The security source disclosed that some village vigilantes lost their lives while a few sustained gunshot wounds.
Kalabalge community is a few kilometers from Gamboru-Ngala where sect members killed at least 300 people last week Tuesday.