Boko Haram massacre: Satellite images show Nigerian town of Baga 'wiped off the map'

Updated

The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned of a growing humanitarian crisis in Nigeria and neighbouring Niger as tens of thousands of refugees flee deadly Boko Haram attacks.

It is still not known how many people died in last week's suspected massacre in Baga, a town on the shores of Lake Chad in north-east Nigeria, however some reports suggested thousands of people may have been killed.

Amnesty International said hundreds of people, if not more, were thought to have been killed in the attack, which began on January 3 and targeted civilian vigilantes helping the military.

Amnesty also published satellite images of Baga and Doron Baga, just over 2 kilometres away, which it said showed the scale of the attack, adding the towns had been "wiped off the map".

Photos: Infrared satellite imagery of village of Doron Baga in north-eastern Nigeria, with healthy vegetation falsely coloured in red, taken on January 2, 2015 and January 7, 2015. (DigitalGlobe and Amnesty International)

Aerial shots of the two towns, which had been hit previously by fighting, were shown the day before Boko Haram moved in and a second image taken four days later, showing homes and businesses razed.

"These detailed images show devastation of catastrophic proportions in two towns, one of which was almost wiped off the map in the space of four days," the group's Nigeria researcher Daniel Eyre said.

More than 3,700 structures were damaged or completely destroyed: 620 in Baga and more than 3,100 in Doron Baga, Amnesty said.

The organisation added that the number could be higher.

Local officials have said Baga and at least 16 surrounding settlements were burnt to the ground and at least 20,000 people fled.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said its team in the Borno state capital Maiduguri had provided assistance to 5,000 survivors of the attack.

The United Nations refugee agency said more than 11,300 Nigerian refugees had fled into neighbouring Chad.

Mr Eyre said the witnesses and images reinforced the view that the attack was Boko Haram's "largest and most destructive" in its fight to establish a hardline Islamic state in north-east Nigeria.

"The deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of their property by Boko Haram are war crimes and crimes against humanity, and must be duly investigated," he said in a statement.

About 300 women were said to have been rounded up and detained at a school, witnesses told Amnesty, adding that older women, mothers and children were released after four days but younger women kept.

The Baga attack came before presidential and parliamentary elections in Nigeria next month, with the upsurge in violence apparently designed to undermine the legitimacy of the vote.

On Saturday, 19 people were killed when explosives strapped to a girl said to be as young as 10 detonated at a crowded market in Maiduguri.

Four people were killed when two other young female suicide bombers hit another market in the commercial capital of neighbouring Yobe.

The Red Cross (ICRC) is also concerned about the growing conflict.

Loukas Petridis, head of the ICRC mission in Niger, said in a statement: "Many were injured, many others were sick and still others had lost contact with their families.

"Most have been directly affected by the violence and have lost their property and their livelihoods."

The UN said that since 2013, about 115,000 people had fled Nigeria, where Boko Haram had waged an increasingly bloody insurgency since 2009.

Boko Haram 'killed woman in labour' during attack: Amnesty

Amnesty said Boko Haram fighters had killed a woman as she was in labour, during what was feared to be the deadliest attack in the militants' six-year insurgency.

The human rights group said one witness to the assault on Baga told them the woman was shot by indiscriminate fire that also killed small children.

"Half of the baby boy [was] out and she died like this," the unnamed witness said.

"They killed so many people. I saw maybe around 100 killed at that time in Baga," the man aged in his 50s said.

"I ran to the bush. As we were running, they were shooting and killing."

Another woman said: "I don't know how many, but there were bodies everywhere we looked."

The testimony backed claims from local officials that huge numbers were killed.

Other witnesses said they had seen decomposing bodies littering the streets.

One man, who escaped from Baga after hiding for three days, said he was "stepping on bodies" for five kilometres as he fled through the bush.

Security analysts said it may be impossible to know exactly how many were killed, with the town and surrounding area still under rebel control.

AFP

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, refugees, terrorism, law-crime-and-justice, nigeria

First posted