AFTER a long while, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau made another video appearance yesterday.
The group claimed responsibility for two recent attacks in the northeast where many people were killed.
Besides, it hinted that women and children are among its hostages.
In the video is Shekau, who has been declared a global terrorist by the United States, seated on a rug with a kalashnikov resting behind his right shoulder. The group also rejected, once again, the Federal Government’s plan to give its members amnesty.
It had ealier dismissed the amnesty proposal, saying it should be the one to give Nigeria amnesty.
“We are the ones that carried out the Bama attack,” Shekau said in Hausa, referring to the May 7 assault that killed 55 people, mostly soldiers and policemen. In the video, he also takes responsibility for the April 16 raid in the town near Lake Chad that sparked clashes with soldiers which killed nearly 200.
The military has been accused of causing scores of deaths in the Baga violence by deliberately setting fires that razed thousands of homes. The allegation was denied by the Defence Headquarters, which also debunked assertion that many bodies were buried in mass graves.
“It was you, the security agents, that went into town the following day and burnt homes and killed people at will,” Shekau said.
The military insisted that only 37 people, including 30 suspected Islamists, died in the Baga violence.
Some seven minutes into the 12-minute video message, the screen splits, showing Shekau on the left with a group of unidentified women and children on the right.
The Islamist leader claimed this group is being held hostage in retaliation for the wives and children of Boko Haram members detained by the military.
Boko Haram has never before boasted about the kidnapping of women and children.
“As long as we do not see our women and children, we will never release these women and children,” Shekau said.
The group set out a similar condition for the release of seven members of a French family who were kidnapped in February in Cameroon near the Nigerian border. The Moulin-Fournier family were released last month.
Before claiming the French abductions, Boko Haram had not widely been associated with kidnappings. Their attacks, which have killed hundreds since 2009, have included suicide blasts as well as coordinated gun and bomb assaults on the security forces and other symbols of authority.
The recent attacks in the Northeast have raised concern about the increasingly brazen tactics used by the insurgents, who have said they are fighting to create an Islamic state in mostly Muslim northern Nigeria.
In Bama, they stormed the commercial centre in a convoy of seven vehicles, launching coordinated pre-dawn attacks on the military, police and several government buildings.
It was not immediately clear last night how the committee appointed to seek dialogue with the sect will react to its latest rejection of peace overtimes.
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