Nigeria marked a bloody Valentine’s Day yesterday as Boko Haram insurgents launched a bloody attack on Gombe, the capital of North- Eastern state, Gombe. Witnesses said the insurgents overran a checkpoint on the edge of the city and explosions and gunfire were heard, BBC reports.
A security source and witnesses said the attack on the city was later repelled. Nigerian troops and a fighter jet were used in a counter-attack. The insurgents, who fled with corpses of their colleagues, dropped a written notice, warning residents against participating in the coming elections. Witnesses in Gombe said they saw the insurgents fleeing in dozens of vehicles. “We saw them leaving and some of them shouting and telling us not to be scared that they did not come to harm us; that they had come to fight soldiers,” said a villager at the outskirts of Gombe, who spoke to journalists on phone.
“We saw some of the vehicles carrying bodies of persons that appeared to have been killed or injured. Some of them were dropping written messages in Hausa,” the source who didn’t want to be named for security reasons said. Reports said militants first attacked the town of Dadin Kowa, about 40km (25 miles) from Gombe. Ground troops with air support then battled to keep the insurgents from entering the city. Residents fled into the bush and into nearby hills. Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters later tweeted that it had repelled the attacks and that troops were in hot pursuit of the terrorists.
The attack fell on a day when presidential and National Assembly elections were earlier scheduled before they were shifted to March 28. Incidentally, the Nigerian military had called for the postponement of the polls because it claimed that it wanted to launch a full-scale operation against the insurgents on February 14.
Gombe has previously suffered suicide attacks but this is the first time Boko Haram has launched a direct assault on the city. Security sources told PRNigeria that the terrorists are desperately seeking other places to set up camps as they are being pursued from their existing camps in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. “In the last few weeks, Boko Haram camps in the northern parts of the states close to the borders with neighbouring countries have been under intense pressure from Nigerian troops in cooperation with troops from the Multinational Joint task Force.
“Some of the camps have been destroyed. And as they could no longer enter Cameroon and Niger so easily, they are moving southwards, the sources confirmed. “Eyewitnesses said the militants attacked soldiers at the security checkpoints at the edge of the town and forced their way into the quarter guard of the 301 Artillery Regiment. “The quarter guard was burned but they could not proceed into the main barracks, which is a little far off.
“The terrorists were said to have first invaded Dadin Kowa, a town, 40 kilometres away from Gombe but as they approached the state capital, they were engaged from the air and a combination of troops and mobile policemen,” the PR agency said in a statement. The insurgency has become a regional crisis with the four affected countries – Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon – agreeing to form a regional military force to try to contain the threat. In response, the insurgents have stepped up their attacks in Nigeria and neighbouring states.
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