Governor Kashim Shettima
Borno State Government is to set up a five-man committee to oversee the reconstruction of destroyed houses and vehicles in Benisheik town, where gunmen launched an attack last Tuesday and killed many commuters, including three policemen and two soldiers.
Addressing the few residents of the town that summoned courage to return, Governor Kashim Shetima said N50 million had been earmarked for the project.
He consoled the people of the town over the traumas inflicted upon them by the attack and losses that followed.
In an attempt to encourage fleeing residents to return, the Commander of the Twenty-one Armoured Brigade, Colonel Muhammad Yusuf, and the state police Commissioner, Alhaji Lawal Tanko, said adequate reinforcement of operatives and arms would immediately be dispatched to the town to forestall a recurrence of the incident.
He explained that security personnel stationed in the town had to flee to save their lives when they ran out of ammunition, but assured the residents that such a situation would never happen again.
Earlier, the residents had threatened to abandon the town if the authorities concerned failed to provide the security men adequate ammunition to repel further attacks on them.
Some of the residents disclosed that the gunmen began the attack at five p.m by mounting a roadblock on the Maiduguri-Damaturu
highway during which they killed no fewer than one hundred and fifty commuters, whom they said were mainly residents of Maiduguri.
They said security men stationed at the town told them to flee when they realised they would not be able to withstand the fire power of the attackers, who came in two black-coloured armoured tanks, five pick-up vans, and many motorcycles.
The residents explained that the heavily-armed attackers, who wore military uniform and bullet-proof jackets, later overran the town, burnt many structures, and made away with foodstuffs before they left for the bush at about five a.m.
Our correspondent reports that fifteen trucks, eighteen cars, eight motorcycles, six bicycles, the main market, and about one hundred and fifty private houses and shops were torched.
Meanwhile, the Borno State Environmental Protection Agency has begun to evacuate the scattered and decomposing corpses abandoned in the bush.
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