Islamist assault on border town in Nigeria may have left 300 dead

Newspaper reports claimed the death toll could be as high as 300.

The militants sprayed gunfire into the crowds of people at a busy market that is open at night when temperatures are cooler.

Nigerian federal senator Ahmed Zannah said the attack lasted about 12 hours, according to a newspaper. The insurgents set homes ablaze and gunned down residents who tried to escape from the flames, reports said.

Mr Zannah blamed fighters of the Boko Haram terrorist network.

Information commissioner Mohammed Bulama, of north-eastern Borno state, said “many, many” people were killed and a number of shops and homes were set ablaze and destroyed in the Monday night attack on Gamboru Ngala, on the border with Cameroon.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgents are holding 276 teenage girls hostage and are threatening to sell them into slavery.

The rebels’ five-year-old Islamic uprising has claimed the lives of thousands of Muslims and Christians. The insurgents say Western influences are corrupting and they want to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of 170 million of whom half are Christian.

President Barack Obama has said that the US will do everything it can to help Nigeria find the kidnapped girls.

Mr Obama said that finding the girls was the immediate priority and dealing with the Boko Haram group was a close second.

“In the short term our goal is obviously is to help the international community, and the Nigerian government, as a team to do everything we can to recover these young ladies,” Mr Obama said in a TV interview. “But we’re also going to have to deal with the broader problem of organisations like this that... can cause such havoc in people’s day-to-day lives.”

Mr Obama said the Nigerian government has accepted technical assistance from US military and law enforcement officials.

“We’re going to do everything we can to provide assistance to them,” the president added.

Mr Obama said that the April 15 abduction, which has ignited international outrage and mounting demands for Nigeria to do more to find and free the girls before they are harmed, is a “terrible situation”.

“Boko Haram, this terrorist organisation that’s been operating in Nigeria, has been killing people and innocent civilians for a very long time,” Mr Obama said, adding that the group long has been identified as one of the worst local or regional terrorist organisations in the world. “I can only imagine what the parents are going through,” added the president, a father of two daughters aged 15 and 12.

The technical experts, including a team to be put together by the US Embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, will include US military and law enforcement personnel skilled in intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiating, information sharing and victim assistance, as well as officials with expertise in other areas, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The US was not considering sending armed forces, Mr Carney noted.