At least 12 loggers were killed in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state near the border with Cameroon when their vehicle hit a landmine in an area where Boko Haram jihadists are active, two NGOs working in the region said Wednesday.
The loggers were on their way to the bush to collect firewood when the flat-bed vehicle conveying them rolled over a mine suspected to have been planted by Boko Haram jihadists on the highway outside Pulka village, the NGOs said in two reports seen by AFP.
Northeast Nigeria is at the heart of a more than decade-long jihadist insurgency where militants still target rural areas even after they have been pushed back from the large swaths of land they controlled at the height of the conflict.
“Men suspected to be Boko Haram… planted explosive… and killed 12 people while many were injured along Pulka to Gwoza route,” one of the reports read.
According to the other report, which gave the same toll, seven other loggers were injured “out of which three are very critical and have been evacuated to Maiduguri for further medical attention”.
The Nigerian security forces did not respond to a request for confirmation of the blast.
