By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS
Suspected Boko Haram militants late Sunday torched homes and burnt the corpses of people they killed in a village in Nigeria's northeastern Borno State, locals have confirmed.
"We understand that fleeing militants conducted a hit-and-run attack in Kwajafa village," Umaru Biu, a local resident and hunter, told The Anadolu Agency by phone.
The village lies in Borno's Hawul local government area.
"Some men were killed and their bodies burnt along with many homes there," Biu said.
"They did not kill the women and children, but they made them watch while they perpetrated this evil," he added.
Biu said the militants had fled the village after the attack, which, he claimed, lasted less than an hour.
A police source confirmed the attack.
"Reports of a Boko Haram attack in Kwajafa are true, but I cannot say the number of people who died," he told AA, asking not to be named.
"But they have since fled the area because troops dispatched to the village did not meet them," said the policeman.
"We fear the attack was by remnants of the fleeing terrorists dislodged from Sambisa and other areas," he added.
Nigeria is fighting a six-year Boko Haram insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced over one million people from the country's northeast, where the militants have been the most ruthless.
The military recently announced that all territory captured earlier by the insurgents in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states had since been "liberated" by the army.
Gwoza, the headquarters of Boko Haram's self-styled "Islamic caliphate," was "liberated" by the army in late March.
Neither the army nor local civilian vigilante groups have confirmed the Kwajafa attack.
"We are not aware of this incident yet, but I am sure that Kwajafa is under the Biu emirate and not held by the militants," Jubrin Gunda, a spokesman for the local Civilian Joint Task Force, told AA.
"This would be a one-off attack by the terrorists as they flee," he said.
Defense spokesman Chris Olukolade did not respond to AA's requests for comment.
