At least 26 people were killed when suspected Islamist Boko Haram militants stormed a village early on Monday, in Askira-Uba Local Government Area in northeast Nigeria and a military warplane opened fire to repel the attackers, local residents and a security source said on Tuesday.
The warplane attacked Boko Haram fighters fleeing in pick-up trucks after raiding Dille, near Lassa in the south of Borno State, for several hours. The attackers shot at inhabitants and burned homes and three churches.
Most of the deaths occurred during the raid but cannon fire from the military jet also killed at least six civilians – four women and two children, residents said.
“The pilot was just spraying bullets anywhere … People were running here and there. Many people were injured from the bullets,” a resident, Suleiman Haruna, said.
Nigeria’s defense headquarters in Abuja did not respond to a request for comment on the incident, but a security source in Borno State confirmed the deployment of the military plane.
The residents and the security source said 20 suspected members of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, were killed by local vigilantes who fought back, but this could not be confirmed as witnesses said the raiders carried off their dead in their trucks.
The militants, who attacked Dille, which is not far from the Cameroon border, were believed to have come from Boko Haram’s Sambisa forest stronghold where some of the girls abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok are thought to be held.
