MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: Militants killed at least 63 people in northeastern Nigeria while storming a town whose residents had been returned from a displacement camp, the state governor said.
The Friday night assault struck the town of Darul Jamal, which hosts a military base on the Nigeria-Cameroon border in a zone ravaged by militant attacks.
Babagana Zulum, governor of the embattled Borno state, said that five soldiers were among the dead, a figure confirmed to AFP by a security source.
The latest attack raises questions about Nigeria’s push in recent years to close down camps for internally displaced persons and return their inhabitants to the countryside.
“It’s very sad, this community was resettled some months ago and they went about their normal business,” Zulum told journalists at the scene of the attack.
“As of now, we confirm that 63 have lost their lives, both the civilians and the army.”
While militant violence has waned since the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, from 2013-2015, militants including rival Daesh West African Province (DWAP) continue to launch attacks across rural areas in the northeast.
“The numerical strength of the Nigerian army is not enough to contain the situation,” Zulum said, adding that a newly established force called the Forest Guards was set to augment security personnel in the region.
Residents said the attack began around 8:30 p.m. (1930 GMT), when dozens of fighters arrived on motorbikes, firing assault rifles and torching homes.
“They came shouting, shooting everyone in sight,” Malam Bukar, who fled into the countryside with his wife and three children, told AFP. “When we returned at dawn, bodies were everywhere.”
- Air force says it killed ‘terrorists’ -
Earlier, civilian militia commander Babagana Ibrahim said at least 55 people were killed, while an NGO worker, who asked not to be named, gave AFP a toll of 64.
Neither the army nor the air force responded to an AFP request for comment.
However, in a statement picked up by local media, the air force said it killed 30 “terrorists” who had engaged in a gun fight with ground troops in the town, also known as Dar-El-Jamal.
Many of the victims were families recently relocated from the Government Secondary School displacement camp in Bama, which authorities shut down earlier this year.
“The government told us we would be safe here,” said Hajja Fati, a mother of five who lost her brother in the attack. “Now we are burying our people again.”
The area is known to be under the control of a Boko Haram commander, Ali Ngulde. A security source told AFP he led the attack.
- Militant resurgence -
Boko Haram has been waging a bloody insurgency to establish an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria since 2009, leaving around 40,000 people dead and forcing more than two million people to flee their homes.
Rival DWAP split from the group in 2016.
According to a tally by Good Governance Africa (GGA), a non-profit group, the first six months of 2025 saw a resurgence in militant activity.
There were some 300 militant attacks that killed some 500 civilians, mostly by DWAP, which has gained ground in recent years over the more fractured remnants of Boko Haram.
DWAP overran at least 17 Nigerian military bases in that period, aided by an increased use of drones, night-time attacks and foreign fighters, according to GGA.
The resurgence in militant violence comes as neighboring Niger has pulled back from a key multinational task force and the Nigerian military has become stretched by a separate banditry crisis in the northwest.
A biting economic situation under Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has reinforced the grievances that many armed groups feed off in rural areas, some analysts say.
