| Follow up to this report from yesterday. |
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...fighters on a funeral in northeast Nigeria
... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border...
has left 65 people dead, almost triple the initial toll, a local official said Sunday.
The leader of a local anti-Boko Haram militia confirmed the corpse count, while giving a slightly different account of the attack.
Bunu Bukar Mustapha told AFP 23 people were killed as they returned from the funeral and "the remaining 42 were killed when they pursued the terrorists".
Bulama said he thought the latest attack was in retaliation for the killing two weeks ago of 11 Boko Haram fighters by local residents when the fighters approached their village. The residents also captured 10 automatic rifles.
Boko Haram fighters have repeatedly attacked the surrounding Nganzai district.
| ABC News adds: |
Muhammad Bulama, council chairman of the Nganzai local government area, told reporters that 11 other people were wounded during the attack at midday Saturday.
He called it a reprisal after villagers and civilian self-defense forces fought off a Boko Haram ambush in the area two weeks ago, killing 11 extremists.
Nigerians last week marked the grim 10-year anniversary of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created one of the world's largest humanitarian crises. The extremists are known for mass abductions of schoolgirls and putting young women and men into suicide vests for attacks on markets, mosques and other high-traffic areas.