By Olarewaju Kola
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria
At least 12 people, mostly villagers, were killed in Nigeria's northeastern Borno State when suspected Boko Haram insurgents ambushed a commercial vehicle, local vigilantes have said.
"They were in two vehicles heading in another direction when the commercial vehicle carrying 14 passengers ran into them," Hamid Babayo, a young member of a local vigilante group, told The Anadolu Agency on Thursday.
"They ambushed the vehicle and rounded up the passengers before opening fire on all of them, except for a lady and a girl who they took," he said, adding that the insurgents then set the vehicle ablaze.
According to Babayo, the incident occurred at Cross-Kawa, a remote settlement near the Nigerian border in northern Borno State.
The attack appears to be a return to a tactic used earlier by the insurgents, who in recent months have focused on raiding communities and seizing villages.
In June of last year, Boko Haram militants ambushed a commercial vehicle on Bama Road, a major highway along central Borno, killing at least 11 passengers, mostly grain traders. Since then, no major attacks on motorists have been recorded.
Nigeria continues to battle a five-year insurgency in the country's northeast.
An emboldened Boko Haram recently stepped up its militant activity, seizing several areas across Adamawa, Borno and Yobe – the three states worst hit by the insurgency – which they declared to be part of a self-styled "Islamic caliphate."
The group has also recently resorted to using suicide bombers and planting explosives.
In November alone, Nigerian Security Tracker, an NGO, estimated that more than 200 people had been killed in suicide attacks and bombings – all linked to Boko Haram – across the country's north.
Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima recently said that, this year alone, more than 3,000 people had been killed and over two million displaced in Borno due to the insurgency.
Outlawed in Nigeria, Turkey and the United States, Boko Haram first emerged in the early 2000s preaching against government misrule and corruption.
It became violent after the death of its leader in 2009 while in police custody.
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