* Offensive against Islamists has not stemmed violence
* President Jonathan sacked military command after lapses
By Ibrahim Mshelizza
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Nigerian Islamists
killed 18 people and burned dozens of houses in attacks on two
villages in remote northeastern Borno state, witnesses said on
Friday, despite a military offensive aimed at stemming violence
in vulnerable rural regions.
“Suddenly we heard gunshots in all directions and cries for
help from women and children,” said Wovi Pogu, nursing a gunshot
wound from the attack on his village of Njaba in which 10 people
were killed on Tuesday. Five others were wounded.
“As entered my house I was hit on leg and I fell down but I
dragged myself to a nearby shack where I hid until the shooting
subsided,” he said, from his bed at a hospital in Borno’s main
city of Maiduguri.
Fighters from Boko Haram, whose campaign for a breakaway
Islamic state has killed thousands in mostly Muslim northern
Nigeria, also shot dead eight people in Kaya village before
razing it to the ground on Wednesday, witnesses said.
Boko Haram, seen as the gravest security threat in Africa’s
top oil producer, torched two other villages on the same day,
witnesses said, but no one was hurt. Colonel Muhammadu Dole,
spokesman for Nigerian forces in the northeast, said he had no
further details on the incidents.
A military offensive against the four-and-a-half-year-old
insurgency that President Goodluck Jonathan ordered last May has
pushed the rebels into remoter areas, but it has failed to stem
the violence. It has also triggered reprisals on civilians.
Jonathan replaced his entire military command last week,
after some embarrassing security lapses in rebel-affected areas,
including an attack on the airport and military barracks in
Maiduguri last month.
He also named Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, a northern Muslim,
veteran army general and ex-national security adviser as a new
minister in a cabinet reshuffle. Gusau is tipped to take the
defence portfolio.
Jonathan, a southern Christian, has in the past been accused
of giving too many key security posts to the largely Christian
south, a charge he denied.
(Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Joe Brock)
