IS claims deadly attack on Nigeria football pitch
At least 29 people are dead after militants stormed a community in Nigeria’s north-eastern Adamawa state, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility for an assault that reduced homes, a church, and motorcycles to ash before security forces could respond.
The attack struck Guyaku community in the Gombi local government area, where residents had gathered at a football pitch. Gunmen opened fire indiscriminately before fanning out through the settlement, burning houses, places of worship, and motorcycles in an assault that local authorities say lasted several hours. IS claimed the attack without specifying a motive.
Among those who lost their lives were 28 men and one woman, according to witnesses who spoke to Nigerian broadcaster TVC News outside a church that bore the scars of the rampage, burn marks across its interior, an overturned drum kit, and an abandoned keyboard left where musicians had last played.
The church’s pastor described the sequence of events: attackers had pursued people fleeing the initial gunfire directly into the village, using the panic to move deeper into the community, burning as they went.
“We are pleading, on behalf of the people here, we need security,” he said.
Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri travelled to the scene, sharing photographs of his arrival and calling the attack an “affront to our humanity.” His spokesperson reported a community gripped by fear, with many families having fled their homes rather than risk another night in the village.
“The atmosphere in the community remains tense, with grief and fear evident,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that families had “abandoned their homes over concerns of further attacks.”
Fintiri moved quickly to signal a security response. “We are intensifying security operations immediately to restore peace and ensure every resident feels safe in their home again,” he posted on X.
BBC Verify geolocated photographs from the governor’s visit to Sangere Mapindi, a settlement roughly 4km south-east of Guyakyu. Verified social media footage from the aftermath shows officials inspecting a damaged primary school and the charred remains of motorcycles in the same area.
The attack is the latest in a long pattern of violence along Nigeria’s restive north-eastern corridor, which borders Cameroon and has endured years of raids by both IS affiliates and local criminal gangs. The region was the birthplace of Boko Haram’s insurgency in 2009, a conflict that has since claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced more than two million people, and spilled across borders into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.
Earlier this month, nearly 400 individuals were sentenced during mass trials for alleged links to Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province. Late last year, the United States carried out strikes against IS-linked militants in north-western Nigeria as part of broader counter-terrorism cooperation.
The Nigerian government faces intensifying domestic and international pressure over rising insecurity, with the country’s next general elections adding further urgency to the question of how, and how quickly, the state can contain the threat in its north-east.
Source: BBC
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