Boko Haram: About A 100 People Lost Their Lives In An Attack On Gworza, Emir Missing

Gunmen believed to be members of the dreaded terrorist group, Boko Haram attacked Gwoza town, Borno State, yesterday, security sources have said. The attackers were said to have killed about 100 people. 

According to reports from Leadership, the raid caused the disappearance of the new Emir of Gwoza, Alhaji Muhammed Idrissa Timta, who succeeded his father who was killed by Boko Haram on May 30, this year. Gwoza town, which is about 158km from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, is the largest town after Maiduguri, Biu and Bama; Damboa is the fifth.

Residents who used mobile phone lines of Cameroon to call from the mountain tops where they had all ran to take refuge, said  the gunmen that attacked them were dressed in soldiers’ uniforms and rode in vehicles painted with military colours.

“They came in their multitudes in the early hours of today (Wednesday), and they went to first attack the soldiers before attacking the town”, said a resident who begged not to be named as he feared being exposed.

 The source who spoke in Hausa said he could speak through his phone because he was able to tap from the network of “Orange”, one of Cameroon’s national carriers.

 He told journalists: “I can communicate now because most of us are up in the mountains, many may have been killed; but from the top of the hills here we still could see the Boko Haram gunmen moving around in some armoured tanks with metal wheel towards the direction of the town near the palace of our Emir; I cannot say if the Emir is safe or not but everyone has left the town as we are speaking now.

 I have lost one of my friends with whom we were fleeing up the hills. He was shot with a bullet from behind. Everybody is scared because we can’t tell what will happen to us by night; the entire town is now taken over by the terrorists.” 

Sources close to Gwoza Emirate told journalists in Maiduguri that the new Emir of Gwoza, Alhaji Muhammadu Idrissa Timta, may have been helped to escape before the attackers could reach his palace. But no official confirmation could be sourced on that up to the time of filing this report.

 The young monarch, who is in his early 40s, succeeded his father, the immediate past Emir of Gwoza, Alhaji Idrissa Timta, after he was killed by Boko Haram gunmen on May 30 when he was travelling to Gombe to attend the burial of the late Emir of Gombe, alongside the emirs of Askira and Uba. 

The two emirs survived, but the king of Gwoza, who was the oldest, did not. His assailants shot him in the head. 

Efforts to get across to the police public relations officer, Gideon Jubrin, was not successful too, but a source at the police headquarters who pleaded anonymity in this story told reporters that “we have received signals that Gwoza is under attack, but we could not give details now because the CP himself is out of town”.