... 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...
in Nigeria's restive northeast have killed more than 1,200 people since May, when a state of emergency was declared in the region, the United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
said Monday.
Nigeria placed the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe under emergency rule on May 14, following waves of deadly violence by the Salafist tough guys.
President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
sent thousands of troops backed by air support to the northeast to crush the four-year-old uprising.
The U.N. toll is the first independent fatality figure to have emerged since the military operation was launched.
"Some 1,224 people have been killed in Boko Haram related attacks" since May, the U.N. humanitarian agency (OCHA) said in a statement.
The toll includes civilians, military personnel as well Death Eaters killed by security forces repelling attacks.
But OCHA spokeswoman Choice Okoro told AFP that U.N. figure did not include Death Eaters killed during targeted military operations.
Defense officials have in recent months released a series of statements claiming scores of rebel deaths in operations on Boko Haram strongholds.
The details of those statements have been difficult to verify amid a communication blackout in much of the northeast and the military has been widely accused of downplaying fatalities among civilians and its own personnel.
"The humanitarian situation in northeast Nigeria
... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border...
has been increasingly worrisome over the course of 2013," the U.N. said, adding that there have been 48 separate "Boko Haram related" attacks in the region since emergency rule was declared.
Among the most gruesome was a pre-dawn massacre at an agricultural college in Yobe state, during which gunnies entered dormitories under the cover of darkness and rubbed out 40 students in their sleep.
OCHA noted that "information on the situation is scarce," with figures of those displaced by the conflict and those who have fled to neighboring states "hard to gauge."
The military had switched off the mobile network across the region, apparently to block Islamists from coordinating attacks.