An operative of the Anti Terrorism Squad of the Nigeria Police Force in conflict-ridden NE Nigeria
Residents flee homes after Boko Haram attack in Yobe
January 7, 2012
KANO(AFP)
Hundreds of residents fled their homes Saturday in a town in northeastern Nigeria in the wake of all-night gun battles between Islamists and security forces, police and residents said.
Police have not yet determined the death toll from the violence in Potiskum, they said.
“Our men engaged Boko Haram gunmen in shootouts for most of the night which led to some deaths and injuries,” Yobe state police commissioner Lawan Tanko told AFP.
“It is too early to give figures because we are still investigating the incident and taking stock of the situation,” Tanko said.
Dozens of armed Islamists stormed Potiskum on Friday and launched gun and bomb attacks on the police headquarters. The scale of damage was not immediately clear as soldiers cordoned off the area.
The attackers fired shots and threw a bomb into a nearby police barracks but no one was hurt, said residents in the barracks. Two banks in the town were also robbed and burnt by the Islamists, residents said.
Residents of neighbourhoods around the police headquarters have vacated their homes in fear of military raids in the area in the aftermath of the attack, residents said.
The town is part of regions placed under emergency rule by President Goodluck Jonathan a week ago.
Those who fled their homes moved in with relatives and friends in areas unaffected by the attacks, residents said.
“Virtually all the residents of the Dogo Tebo and Dogo Nini areas have fled their homes for fear of attack by soldiers who came to the town this morning from Damaturu,” said Idris Bakanike, a resident of the Dogo Tebo area overlooking the police headquarters.
Dozens of soldiers were deployed on Saturday and took up positions around the police headquarters, firing sporadic shots in the area.
“We are afraid the soldiers will raid and burn our homes like they do in Maiduguri each time Boko Haram attack,” Amiru Umar, a resident of Dogo Nini said.
Soldiers in the northeastern city of Maiduguri have been accused of burning homes and shooting residents after attacks by the Islamists, accusing residents of complicity with them
THE BEST SOLUTION FOR NIGERIAN GOVT.TO SIT DOWN WITH BOKO HARAM AND LOOK INTO THEIR PROBLEM
Gentlemen, In the absence of specific military accounts, we have to read in between the lines of the press reports.
Storming potiskum over night and rapidly hitting police head quarters and banks. This suggests that BH are mobile in perhaps pickup trucks. They are armed with assault rifles, GPMGs (as stated by NA in past accounts) and “Bombs” ?? you mean grenades maybe? RPGs?
In any case, this sounds like “sahel type” light manouver warfare that has been seen from Chad to Sudan to Libya to Niger and in somalia. Gentlemen, this is not “hit and run” tactics, this is a full frontal assault on a police base in a city that is already under military lock down.
In some of today’s postings on this blog, we read that Kenyan F-5 fighter-bombers destroyed 10 tacticals (pick up gun trucks) and 60 shabab fighters in a strike. We also saw pics of md-500 recon helicopters hovering above manouvering ground troops.
All I am saying is like the shabab, BH in trucks approaching a city like potiskum can be spotted from the air if air reconnaisance assets like the KDF MD-500 helicopters were available. Then they can be destroyed with airstrikes before they descend on a city’s main police station.
God will surely arise to protect the defenceless. Our political & religipus leaders should be absolutely sincere to us and themselves. No matter how much we defraud this country in the guise of an unending insecuriry situation. May the god of peace grant us the desired lv & peace
God will surely arise to protect the defenceless. Our political & religipus leaders should be absolutely sincere to us and themselves. No matter how much we defraud this country in the guise of an unending insecuriry situation. May the god of peace grant us the desired lv & peace for our daily living
A police or military base involved in counterinsurgency operations should at least have several high Sniper vantage points. Together with Night Vision scopes. With this, they should be able to ID and pick off the BH assailants during the operation.
This would prevent them having to lunch indiscriminate revenge attacks on the “innocent” neighbours after such an assault. CHIDI no be so ?
Makes perfect sense. Keep up the flow of cutting-edge ideas. From behind this control panel, we can ASSURE you that your ideas are getting through to the right quarters and they are firmly locked onto the blog.
Sustain the flow of well-respected and much-appreciated ideas and CONSTRUCTIVE criticism sans effusive negativity.
A watchtower with 360 view in the centre of the base is basic good practice, snipers, support weapons and fire controllers can be based there. A lot of basic things seem to not be getting done.
The best way to counter this is to have a strong night patrolling paln in and around the town, that way there will be no surprises or even if they slip through there are forces on the ground to quickly react.
Helicopters with IR and/ or NVG’s again would be perfect but if not parachute illum and then an aggrssive Company sized quick reaction force to push the attackers out of town or at least divert them from murdering the innocent. I guess its easy for us to criticise from the comfort of our homes without knowing the constraints of the local commanders but these attacks are too grisly not to demand a strong counter measure. I mean the comment of the interviewee is telling, fleeing to avoid reprisals.
Any follow up force should be treating civilian casualties and interviewing them to try and get a good picture of enemy tactics, numbers etc.
Its so depressing to be stuck here
@doziex if i may add to what you’ve said, drones should also be used. I read somewhere that the nigerian military purchased drones from isreal, some time back. And there is also the AMEBO-1 drone built by air-force engineers( i don’t know, how that program has gone). They should all be deployed 4 survelliance. The army should also improve her method of dessimination of information. It’s current method of passing out information is poor. Other mediums should be applied such as facebook and twitter. It’s fight against boko-haram on the ground is important, but just as important as the war on the ground, is it’s propaganda war in the media. It should inspire confidence on the populace, with reliable, quick access to info. Just as the kenyan army does.
@Dozie and Henry…full support to ur suggestions…also the Armed forces should work at infiltrating the rank of BH…spies (local assets) should be inserted into the hot zones.
The machinery of government in Nigeria grinds extremely slowly. The National Assembly need to lose some sleep so that the FY 2012 federal budget is passed. Only monies which are destined for private pockets or intended for perks, emoluments and overseas travel appear to gain swift approval while the processes leading to the approval of funds which are able to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of Nigerians invariably get committed to lengthy speeches.
We should like to see the DHQ pull out military contingents to lower profile IS Ops by March 31st. Rather than those IS Ops, the troops would serve us better steeling up the defences at the 2,500+ km span of borders between Kamba in the Northwest and Gembu in the Northeast. Let them free up as many infantrymen for CORE counterinsurgency operations in areas blighted by terrorist-led violence in the Northeast and on the Jos Plateau which used to be an inter-ethnic conflict fringing on insurgency but which has also now become a theatre in the war on terror.
Sometime around 1988, the Ministry of Interior then under the watch of Colonel(later Brig.Gen) John Shagaya acquired a fleet of five Dornier Do-228 surveillance planes and established the Air Border Patrol Unit of the Nigeria Immigration Service. So advanced were the planes which had ALL-WEATHER round-the-clock capabilities that EACH one of them had £8 million worth of surveillance equipment on board while the crews were trained in Switzerland, France and Sweden.
As soon as the crews took to the skies, they discovered an illegal airstrip which was being used for smuggling operations in a remote corner of Katsina State.
At a time like this, their night-vision capability is essential to border patrol operations. Some of us made a lot of noise about this matter around the time of the 2009 BH uprising and were somewhat surprised when the FG actually gave approval for the resuscitation of one unit in November 2009.
That grounded fleet needs to be made airworthy again and shared between the NAF and the NIS in a 3:2 ratio. Let the NIS take charge of the saner stretch between Kamba(Kebbi State) and Jigawa State’s international frontiers.
For her part, the NAF should deploy one unit stationed at the Nguru Airstrip to take charge of the stretch between Nguru and the Chad-Niger-Nigeria border intersection on the Lake Chad; a second one operating out of Maiduguri would cover the whole area between the said Lake Chad intersection and the Banki border post while the third operating out of Yola would cover the entire stretch between Madagali and the Mambilla Mts.
Those would greatly enhance our capacity for strategic airbone intelligence gathering.
That said, we are still wondering why no action has been taken on the French approval for the sale of a squadron of Fennec helicopters (which would be perfect for anti-piracy patrols and COIN hot pursuit+recce+ground attack) and four patrol ships, possibly 48-58m category and which would do well for patrols up to 50 nautical miles out to sea.
Well, we have held this in for sometime now but high-credibility sources assure me that the NA have also taken delivery of tactical UAVs.
Yes, the NAF took delivery of Aerostar UAV launch vehicles each of them equipped with 6 UAVs. I also understand that the Alenia ATR 42MPA Surveyor planes came with hatches in the belly from which UAVs can be air-launched and supplies dropped.
The NN also took delivery of a similar combination of Seastar unmmaned vehicles.
Above all, the Israelis delivered a total of ten coastal radars for installation all along the 853 kilometre coastline. Those would be aligned with the RMAC radar sites which were installaed in conjunction with the US Navy’s Africa Partnership Station.
The entire Israeli package cost about $500m. We are still trying to establish the country which supplied the said tactical UAVs.
I thought UAV’s were already operational in the delta, fromthe description given by a non military source what could only be UAV’s have been in operation since 2010
The coastal radar sites, Aerostar UAVs of the Air Force, Seastar USVs of the Navy, the RMAC radar sites and the Alenia ATR-42MPA Surveyor and the TRACON project(TRACON=Total Radar Coverage of Nigeria) are part of one high-tech strategic surveillance nexus of which NIGCOMSAT-1R represents the apex.
What we are talking about here are smaller tactical UAVs for the NA which are new to the inventory. Maybe in two years time, the logs would come to terms with that new reality.