Nigeria's Top General Says Boko Haram Could Be Wiped Out in 3 Months
Nigeria's Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which has killed at least 1,000 Christians and Muslims since May 29, could be defeated in just three months, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai has said.
The terror group has been "substantially degraded" and could be defeated "before the end of the year [2015]," Buratai told BBC in an interview.
Last month, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari told the country's military to defeat Boko Haram within the next three months.
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Buhari took office in late May, which led to a sudden increase in violence by Boko Haram.
The terror group has killed at least 1,000 Christians and Muslims over the last three months, and its attacks have caused more than 2.1 million people to flee their homes in northeast parts of the country, according to reports.
More than 1,000 people have died in Boko Haram attacks since May 29, according to Agence France Presse.
The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration says more than 2.1 million people have been displaced in Boko Haram's insurgency since 2009. IOM also says it has recently monitored a spurt in the incidence of Boko Haram attacks.
"It is very important for the authorities and for humanitarian partners to speed up the delivery of adequate assistance to these [internally displaced] people," Enira Krdzalic, IOM Nigeria Chief of Mission says.
Boko Haram has killed at least 15,000 people since 2009.
The state-run National Emergency Management Agency agrees with the IOM's estimate of internally displaced people, but says Boko Haram violence is not the only reason.
"We are aware of the new figure of 2.1 million displaced people but it should be noted that there were other factors that brought about the increase apart from the Boko conflict," NEMA spokesman Manzo Ezekiel was quoted as saying. "We have people displaced by communal violence in states like Nassarawa and Taraba included in the figure."
Boko Haram has killed numerous Christians and attacked several churches. It is apparently seeking to create an Islamic state in the Muslim-majority northern Nigeria. It is believed that it earlier gained technical sophistication and weaponry with help from groups like al-Shabaab in southern Somalia and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali.
Most recently, Boko Haram killed 56 people in Baanu, a remote village in Borno State.
"We returned back to the village in the morning after spending the night in the bush, we saw corpses in the streets of the village," a villager, Mustapha Alibe, told The Associated Press of the attack on Friday night.
