Boko Haram Insurgents Slaughter Wives As They Prepare For Gwoza Showdown

A source in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, has told SaharaReporters that many embattled Boko Haram insurgents in the town of Bama slaughtered their wives as Nigerian soldiers continued to rout the Islamist fighters in Nigeria’s northeast. Some of them later moved to Gwoza where they vowed to defend their so-called capital with the last drop of their blood.

“They killed their wives so that the women would not get remarried to unbelievers if their husbands die in the fierce battles with Nigerian soldiers,” said the female source, who just arrived in Maiduguri from Bama, a major battlefront in the continuing military operations to dislodge the Islamist insurgents from Yobe, Adamawa and Borno.

According to the source, the Islamist fighters told their ill-fated wives, “We will not spare anyone of you because if unbelievers marry you, when we get to heaven, there is no way we can meet again. So we are doing this so that we can meet in heaven.”

She said many of the women pleaded for their lives, but their Islamist husbands slaughtered them all the same.

The source said the residents of Bama were terrified as the battle raged, adding that many people lost their lives. “My husband and children hid in one house until the battle was over. Then yesterday we were bought to Maiduguri by the military who saved us from Boko Haram,” the woman said.

A top military source confirmed that many civilians were rescued from Bama. “We received intelligence reports that many civilians were in the town. That’s why we used careful strategies to rescue them. Hundreds of them were brought to Maiduguri yesterday by our troops,” said the source.

Boko Haram insurgents had captured Bama last September, but the town was rescued by Nigerian troops last week.

The soldiers brought more than two hundred civilians, including children and women, in ten vehicles to Maiduguri.