Nigeria returns 3,000 displaced after jihadist violence

Kano, Nigeria, Nov 30 (AFP/APP):Authorities in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state on Monday began returning around 3,000 people to their homes six years after they were displaced by jihadist violence, officials said.

The operation came after a weekend attack on farm workers killed dozens of people in Nigeria’s northeast in one of the deadliest assaults this year blamed on Islamist militants. A UN humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria had initially said on Sunday that at least 110 farm workers were killed in the attack on the village of Koshobe and nearby communities but in a statement on Monday said there had been “several dozen” dead.

The governor of Borno State said more than 70 people had been killed and that the town, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the state capital Maiduguri, still had people missing. The returnees who fled their homes in Marte in Lake Chad region in 2014 were packed into dozens of trucks and buses from Bakassi camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Maiduguri.

The return was of a first group of IDPs from Marte, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said in a statement.

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