Boko Haram insurgents attacked farmers working in their fields in the Gidan Waya suburb of Maiduguri. The militants seized four farmers and beheaded them. Their bodies were later recovered with their severed heads lying beside them.
31 Aug 2019 · Gidan Waya suburb, Maiduguri, Borno
Deaths
4
Injured
0
Kidnapped
0
Total casualties
4
Perpetrators
Boko Haram
Response
Babakura Kolo, a Maiduguri militia leader, confirmed the attack to AFP, stating: "insurgents seized four farmers while working on the farms and decapitated them. The bodies were found with the severed heads lying beside them and brought to the city this afternoon"
Displacement
0
Socioeconomic drivers
Disrupting food production and farming livelihoods around Maiduguri to create fear and economic pressure.
Trajectory
By 2019, Boko Haram had increasingly resorted to gruesome targeted killings and beheadings of farmers as a low-cost terror tactic to control rural areas and undermine government efforts to restore normal economic activity.
Cycle notes
Mirrored earlier Boko Haram attacks targeting rural livelihoods, including the 19 November 2017 Dimge farmers’ execution and beheading, the 13 May 2017 killings of farmers in their fields, the 30 December 2017 Maiwa loggers’ massacre, the 8 January 2018 Kaje loggers’ killings near Maiduguri, and the 15 January 2018 Jinene attack on firewood collectors, collectively reflecting a recurring pattern in which Boko Haram targeted farmers and other rural workers for execution—often through beheading—to instill fear, disrupt food production, and enforce control over agricultural zones surrounding Maiduguri.
Pattern
Beheading
Related — Armed Attack
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