Suspected Boko Haram have killed dozens of farmers working in rice fields at Zabarmari, in Jere Local Government of Borno State, Northeastern Nigeria, on Saturday.
The farmers were waylaid on their way to their rice farms which they were harvesting before the surprise attack happened.
The assailants on Saturday tied up the agricultural workers and slit their throats in the village of Koshobe, near Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state.
The victims were labourers from Sokoto state in Northwest Nigeria, roughly 1,000km (600 miles) away, who had travelled to the northeast to find work, said another militiaman, Ibrahim Liman, who gave the same toll.
“There were 60 farmers who were contracted to harvest paddy in the rice fields. Forty-three were slaughtered, with six injured,” Liman told AFP.
“We have recovered 43 dead bodies, all of them slaughtered, along with six others with serious injuries,” Babakura Kolo, a leader of a local militia fighting armed groups in the region, told AFP news agency.
Civilian Joint Task Force sources say sixty of the farmers were gathered before the assailants shot at close range or beheaded their victims.
It is not clear how many of the farmers were taken away, or how many were spared but a total of sixty persons were assembled before the bloodletting.
Sources say the location, which is a distance from the last Jere town with inhabitants, is a known stronghold of the insurgents.
Local government elections were conducted in the state today, with voter apathy witnessed in some parts of the state.
It is not clear if the ill-fated farmers cast their vote before proceeding to meet their deaths.
Reuters news agency, citing a village leader, a local fighter with the Zamarmari group and a police source, also reported the attack, putting the death toll to at least 40 people.
A search by the authorities for the attackers has been launched, it added.
Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are both active in northeast Nigeria.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, which has displaced about two million since 2009.
“It is no doubt the [work] of Boko Haram who operate in the area and frequently attack farmers,” Kolo, who helped the survivors, said of Saturday’s attack.
Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed grief over the killing of farmers by Boko Haram terrorists.
The farmers were beheaded by the terrorists sect at Zabarmari, in Jere Local Government of Borno State on Saturday.
Buhari, reacting in a statement by Garba Shehu, his spokesman, described the terrorists’ killings as insane.
Part of the statement read: “I condemn the killing of our hardworking farmers by terrorists in Borno State. The entire country is hurt by these senseless killings. My thoughts are with their families in the time of grief. May their souls Rest In Peace.”
The President said the government had given all the needed support to the armed forces “to take all necessary steps to protect the Nigeria’s population and its territory.”
