… as Shettima offers cash reimbursement to victims of fire disaster
By Olayemisi Abdul
Security sources and some residents revealed on Friday that at least 15 Boko Haram fighters were killed during a fierce midnight shootout and bombings with soldiers in Maiduguri.
About 11 deafening blasts had kept Maiduguri residents on a compulsory vigil between midnight and early hours of Friday.
A top security source who doesn’t want to be named told News Diary Online that the bomb blasts were detonated by the Boko Haram sect members who came out in troops to attack the popular Police Area Command building.
‘They came in troops chanting “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar (God is great) as they launched an attack our men. We had multiple blasts including five propelled rocket launchers. It was bad, our men brought down many of them, but I can’t tell the number of casualty incurred on our side’, said the source.
A junior security official who participated in the evacuation of the dead and wounded corpses told Journalists in confidence that he saw at least 15 corpses.
‘We evacuated about 15 corpses of the Boko Haram members in our van, but I can’t give the figure other teams have taken away’, said the source who pleaded to remain anonymous.
A hospital security personnel said piles of corpses were dumped at the corridors of the overstretched Maiduguri General Hospital morgue by soldiers in the early hours of today, even before the morgue attendant resumed work.
Meanwhile Governor Shettima had today promised to reimburse all victims of the fire incident caused by the bomb blast at Gamboru Market on Thursday.
Governor Shettima expressed shock at the level of damage caused by the fire even as military officers told him they don’t have actual count of persons killed as a result of the blast, and the ensuing shootout at the crowded market.
