Members of the dreaded Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have beheaded 27 herders for trespassing in the banned axis of the Kukawa area of Borno State.
A counter-insurgency expert in the Lake Chad region, Zagazola Makama, told newsmen on Thursday in Maiduguri that the ISWAP fighters had earlier banned fishing, farming, and grazing in their hideouts.
Makama revealed that the terrorists accused the herders of spying for the Nigerian military and other security agencies in the region.
Thus, piqued by these allegations, the ISWAP fighters decided to kill them to serve as a deterrent to others.
According to Makama, “The terrorists did not fire any gunshot; they quietly used machetes to behead the 21 herdsmen.”
Also, it was gathered that the terrorists rustled an unspecified number of their cattle to their hideouts.
The terrorists, it was learned, intercepted another set of herdsmen in the Kukawa axis and killed six for the same reason.
A military source in Maiduguri said the herdsmen were killed after they were warned not to graze their cattle on the banned axis of Kukawa, adding that so far they were able to recover four bodies.
