Tension in Potiskum as soldiers kill 18

Community leaders said troops broke into people’s homes and took away the men from the Mosco Line area of Potiskum, Yobe State, early morning on Wednesday.They said the bodies of the 18, most of them young men, were later deposited by the military in the morgue of the Potiskum General Hospital.“The corpses were brought in […]

Community leaders said troops broke into people’s homes and took away the men from the Mosco Line area of Potiskum, Yobe State, early morning on Wednesday.
They said the bodies of the 18, most of them young men, were later deposited by the military in the morgue of the Potiskum General Hospital.
“The corpses were brought in by soldiers and they all have bullet wounds,” a hospital staff told Daily Trust, asking not to be named.
Residents told our correspondent that troops on a house-to-house search rounded up 18 people from their homes without specifying why they were being taken.
“A soldier broke into our house and arrested my brother.

They told me not to worry because they were picking him for an investigation,” a man told Daily Trust.
“But a family friend who works at the general hospital broke the sad news early morning that his dead body and those of 17 others were brought to morgue by soldiers.”
The man said people in Potiskum had planned to stage a peaceful protest but the Emir of Fika intervened and advised that they should take heart.
He said the corpses were released to the families of the deceased and were all buried according to Islamic rites.
He urged authorities to investigate the soldiers’ actions so that the community would have confidence in the security forces.
Another community resident told the BBC Hausa radio: “Soldiers on patrol have been picking up people and killing them without any reason. They take people, who know nothing, to the outskirts of the town and kill them.
“They have killed 18 people and these people we know them to be students, carpenters and some of them are tailors. We know them to be law-abiding people, who have no link with the Boko Haram sect whatsoever.
“I saw all the bodies of the slain people at the mortuary. And you can see on their bodies gun shots and some of them were beaten with gun butts.
“The people in Potiskum are now in panic over the killings without justification. Everybody has remained indoors because of the fears that some strangers have entered the town.
“They had even arrested me myself but because of God’s intervention, they just allowed to me go. Only God saved me from them.”
Some residents believed the men were picked up and killed because they were from the Kanuri ethnic group that forms the bulk of Boko Haram’s membership, a report by AFP news agency said.
“We believe they were killed on suspicion of being Boko Haram because they were Kanuris,” one community leader said.
All those seized were related either by blood or marriage, according to another leader.
“The government should look into this cold-blooded murder and ensure justice is done because being a soldier is not a licence to kill at will on mere suspicion,” he added.
“Our fear is we don’t know what they will do next,” he said, adding that three more people were arrested late on Wednesday in the same area.
There was no immediate response from the military on the allegation that soldiers executed the 18 men they arrested in Potiskum.
Spokesman for the military in Yobe State did not return calls or reply to a text message sent to him seeking for comments on the incident.
Nigerian troops have previously been accused of carrying out extra-judicial killings in the five-year fight against Boko Haram, allegations authorities routinely deny.
The alleged executions came just days after a suicide bomber targeting a procession of Shi’ites killed 22 people. At least five more people in the procession were killed by soldiers’ fire soon after the bombing, according to leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria in Potiskum, Mustapha Nasidi.