UN has made a U-turn on its earlier claim that 110 farmers were killed in the Borno massacre by the Boko Haram insurgents.
The United Nations has made a U-turn on its earlier claim that 110 farmers were killed by suspected Boko Haram insurgents in Zabarmari community, Borno State.
Jomog News Nigeria had reported on Saturday quoting officials of the Borno State government saying at least 43 farmers lost their lives in an attack by insurgents on Koshobe rice field.
During a mass burial of the deceased farmers, on Sunday, the Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, told journalists that 43 farmers were killed.
The UN, much later on Sunday evening, issued a statement signed by Eve Sabbagh, which quoted the head of the UN System in Nigeria, Edward Kallon, saying that he was “outraged and horrified by the gruesome attack against civilians carried out by non-state armed groups in villages near Borno State capital Maiduguri.
“At least 110 civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack.”
In a new release on Monday, the UN said its initial statement was inaccurate.
The UN’s head, public information, said the earlier numbers quoted by Mr Kallon were not correctly sourced.
In an email circulated to reporters, Ms Sabbagh asked journalists to disregard the earlier statement.
“Please note the number of 110 civilians killed on Saturday’s attack is an unconfirmed number and the correct version of the statement by the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator is the one published yesterday on Relief web and used on OCHA Nigeria’s Twitter account.
In the fresh statement, the humanitarian agency replaced the portion where it quoted “110 deaths” with “unspecified figure”.
This time around, Mr Kallon was quoted saying “tens of civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack.”
The remaining paragraphs of the one-paged statement remained the same.
The UN did not, however, add how it got the earlier figure it released and which was quoted by at least one international media outlet.
Meanwhile, sources in Zabarmari had confirmed that a search party was still combing the bushes for other missing farmers at the time our reporter visited the farm.
“The number of death remains the same,” he said. “We have not had any other corpses other than the 43 we buried yesterday; even though we know about 70 farmers were involved in the incident.”
