UN Confirms Death Toll of Boko Haram Attacks for the Last 8 Months

The United Nations stated on December 16, 2013, Monday that attacks by Boko Haram extremist sect have claimed lives of at least 1,200 people since May, when a state of emergency was declared in the restive northeast region.

The UN toll is the first independent fatality figure to have emerged since the military operation was launched.

“Some 1,224 people have been killed in Boko Haram related attacks since May,” the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) said in a statement.

The toll includes civilians, military personnel as well insurgents killed by security forces repelling attacks. At the same time, the UN figures did not include insurgents killed during targeted military operations.

Defence officials have in recent months released a series of statements claiming scores of rebel deaths in operations on Boko Haram strongholds.

The details of those statements have been difficult to verify amid a communication blackout in much of the northeast and the military has been widely accused of downplaying fatalities among civilians and its own personnel.

“The humanitarian situation in northeast Nigeria has been increasingly worrisome over the course of 2013,” the report said.

The number of separate “Boko Haram related” attacks in the region since emergency rule was declared has reached 48.

It would be recalled that Nigeria placed the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe under emergency rule on May 14, following waves of deadly violence by the Islamist rebels.

President Goodluck Jonathan sent thousands of troops backed by air support to the northeast to crush the four-year-old uprising.

The military had switched off the mobile network across the region, apparently to block Islamists from coordinating attacks.

Officially, mobile service has been restored in all three states, but communication remains difficult in Borno, the epicentre of the insurgency and where Boko Haram was founded more than a decade ago.

The sect was designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States in November, has said it is fighting to create and Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.

Washington also put a $7 million (5.1 million Euros) bounty on the group’s purported leader, Abubakar Shekau, who has ruled out any form of negotiations with the government. 

Vanguard