Boko Haram Burns Children Alive In Nigeria, With 86 Total Dead
At the request of my client, Slant News, I aggregated incoming reports to create this article. Due to the speed at which I completed and published this article, it became one of the most shared sources for the incident. Consequently, the article achieved higher metrics than any other content on Slant News up to that date – totaling over 500,000 views in the first several days.
Original date of posting: February 2016
While the world's focus is on ISIS in the Middle East, Nigeria's homegrown militant group, Boko Haram, continues a campaign of brutality that even the Islamic State cannot match.
Reports are coming from camps outside of Maiduguri, describing a coordinated terror assault against the refugees and local Dalori villagers that lasted throughout the night on January 30.
Officials who arrived on the scene Sunday morning report that 86 people have been killed – many of whom were burned alive in their tents by extensive use of firebombs. Firsthand accounts from the survivors have said that many of the victims were children. The attack did not stop at Dalori village, with three female suicide bombers detonating their explosives in neighboring Gamori village – where many of the refugees had fled following the first attack.
Suicide attacks were also reported near Lake Chad, and follow a rash of extreme attacks as Boko Haram has finally begun to lose ground in Nigeria.
Government troops arrived late Saturday night in an attempt to suppress the attack, but found themselves outgunned and were forced to retreat. The Boko Haram militants were finally repelled when heavier weapons arrived later on.
Boko Haram was founded in 2009, and similar to ISIS, they are attempting to form an Islamic State in Africa. However, while ISIS has shown itself to be remarkably public relations savvy and technologically adept – Boko Haram shows no such aptitude. Their consistent terror campaign across West Africa has seen a massive jail break at Bauchi, the kidnapping of 219 schoolgirls in Chibok and a massacre in Baga. While ISIS is no stranger to attacks on softer targets – going after the Yazidis and other minorities in the Middle East – they have a strong focus on taking and capturing territory. Particularly since the Nigerian government began to succeed against Boko Haram, they have aimed more towards civilian targets in an attempt to generate fear.
News media continues to focus on day to day operations of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but we rarely hear about Boko Haram until they do something particularly deplorable. So long as Western interests are spread across the Middle East, and at risk of attack by ISIS, attention will be focused therein. Violence in West Africa is on the rise, and we may soon see it eclipse the Middle East in both economic damage and cost of lives.
The fierce independence of West African nations can be a stumbling block in proper deployment of assets to combat Boko Haram and even piracy along the coast. As multinational task forces bring the amount of pirate attacks off Somalia to near zero, attacks off the coast of Nigeria have picked up the slack. Somali pirates were generally interested in ransom, and violence was rare – but West Africa piracy is some of the most violent in the world, with injuries and death occurring frequently.
While the world is right to monitor ISIS and prevent them from spreading, it is time to consider a similar response to Boko Haram.