Boko Haram ‘supports’ massacre

KANO, Nigeria: The head of Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants said he supported a July 6 attack on a school that killed 42 people, but did not claim responsibility for the massacre, in a video obtained by AFP yesterday.
“We fully support the attack on this Western education school in Mamudo,” in northern Yobe state, Abubakar Shekau said in the 10-minute video message.
The video was delivered to AFP in a manner consistent with previous statements from the rebel leader, who has been declared a global terrorist by the United States.
The early morning gun and bomb attack at a boarding school in the Mamudo district of Yobe saw assailants round up students and staff in a dormitory before throwing explosives inside and opening fire, according to witnesses.
Most of those killed were students. It was the third school attack in recent weeks and the second in Yobe.
He however stopped short of claiming to have ordered the attack.
“We don’t attack students,” he said in the Hausa language message.
Yobe state was one of three areas placed under a state of emergency in May ahead of a sweeping military offensive against Boko Haram.
The military has claimed significant gains in the two-month-old offensive, but such boasts have been difficult to verify and Boko Haram attacks have continued in some places.
Shekau, in the message, also denied reports that Boko Haram had entered into cease-fire negotiations with the government.
This week, a federal Cabinet minister and head of a panel tasked with talking to the insurgents claimed he was negotiating with a legitimate Shekau deputy and that a cease-fire deal was at hand.
“The claim that we have entered into a truce with the government of Nigeria is not true,” the wanted leader said.
Nigeria’s Minister for Special Duties, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki, told journalists that he was negotiating with Shekau’s “second-in-command” and reports of a looming cease-fire filled the front pages of Nigeria’s daily newspapers.
“We don’t know Kabiru Turaki, we have never spoken with him. He is lying,” Shekau said.
Nigeria’s government and military have regularly been accused of spreading false information regarding the insurgency.
Boko Haram has said it is fighting to create a separate state in Nigeria and Shekau.
Last month the US placed a $ 7.0 million bounty on Shekau.