Terrorists kill 19 in fresh Borno attack

At least 19 people were killed when terrorists attacked a village in northeast Nigeria in the early hours of Sunday, Reuters reports.

The attack occurred in the village of Mailari in the Guzamala region of Borno state at around 2 a.m of Sunday, August 19, 2018.

It is unclear if the attackers were Boko Haram or Islamic State of West Africa fighters.

Reuters quoted a survivor, Umar, as saying he had counted 19 dead people, including his younger brother.

An aid worker at a camp who received some survivors, and who declined to be identified, put the death toll at 63, the story says.

'No action was taken'

Umar tells Reuters that the terrorists had been spotted around the village three days before the attack. Locals had warned Nigerian troops stationed in the nearby town of Gudumbali, but no action was taken, he said.

A spokesperson for the Nigerian army wasn't immediately available for comments.

The aid worker said hundreds of people from villages in the area had fled to the camp for displaced people where he worked, in Monguno.

The attack is coming barely a week after soldiers downed tools and protested their deployment to a restive community in Borno.

Boko Haram has been waging a deadly insurgency against Nigeria since 2009. The terrorist sect has killed more than 50,000 people and displaced millions in that time.

The Nigerian government often claims to have technically defeated Boko Haram, but suicide and soft target attacks by the sect on civilian populations haven’t abated.