Villagers from Gwoza area in Borno State have said that people too old to flee are being rounded up and executed.
Islamic extremists in northeastern Nigeria are turning their guns on elderly people, killing more than 50 this week in a new tactic that has instilled more fear in areas the militants call an Islamic caliphate, reported the Associated Press (AP).
Residents from five villages say people too elderly to flee Gwoza Local Government Area were being rounded up and taken to two schools where the militants opened fire on them. The villages are about 130 kilometres southeast of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
“What they are doing now is to assemble the aged people — both men and women … and then they just open fire on some of them,” said Muhammed Gava, a spokesman for civil defence groups in the area. More than 50 people had been killed at Government Day Secondary School in Gwoza, he said.
A villager who had fled said more elderly people were being gathered and shot at Uvaghe Central Primary School. The villager spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of endangering his trapped parents.
Government officials did not immediately comment on the reports.
Nigeria’s military said soldiers are patrolling “in search of terrorists” and “to verify abductions” on Friday around the village of Gumburi, where witnesses say extremists kidnapped at least 185 people a week ago.
In another incident, a new video from Boko Haram extremists has shown gunmen mowing down civilians lying face down in a dorm, and a leader saying they were being killed because they are “infidels” or non-believers.
According to AP, there were so many corpses, that the gunmen had difficulty stepping to reach bodies still twitching with life. Most appeared to be adult men.
“We have made sure the floor of this hall is turned red with blood, and this is how it is going to be in all future attacks and arrests of infidels,” the group leader said in a message.
“From now, killing, slaughtering, destructions and bombing will be our religious duty anywhere we invade.”
The setting of the latest video appears to be a school, a long dormitory furnished with bunk beds which the leader said was in Bama, a town 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Gwoza.
Students and schools are frequently targeted by Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sinful” in the Hausa language.
Previously, the militants had told residents of villages and towns that they would kill only enemies and wanted people to live peacefully in the area they had dubbed an Islamic caliphate, a large swath along Nigeria’s northeastern border with Cameroun that they have controlled for more than three months.
In the video, the leader notes that the prophet Mohammed advised that prisoners should be held, not killed, but said, “We felt this is not the right time for us to keep prisoners; that is why we will continue to see that the grounds are crimsoned with the flowing blood of prisoners.”
He said some of those killed may call themselves Muslims, but were considered infidels by Boko Haram, a Sunni Jihadi group that imposes the strict Shariah law.
Thousands of people have been killed and about 1.6 million driven from their homes in the five-year insurgency that is spilling across borders into Cameroun, Chad and Niger.
