MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A military official said Saturday that about 700 people were killed in the northern city of Maiduguri during recent fighting between police and a radical Islamist sect. The toll was previously thought to be about 300.
Col. Ben Ahanotu told The Associated Press on Saturday that mass burials have begun because bodies were decomposing in the heat. The Islamist compound destroyed by government troops is one burial site, he said.
“They’ve got almost 700 bodies,” Ahanotu, who is in charge of security in Maiduguri, said of officials gathering bodies.
“Right there, they had to do a mass burial there because there are a lot of bodies inside,” he said, pointing to what was the Boko Haram compound. It is now smoldering rubble with digging equipment around it.
The fighting affected other northern cities too. The total death toll is unknown.
Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, was largely quiet Saturday. Its streets had been cleared of bodies and the blood spilled during five days of fierce fighting. Banks and markets have reopened.
A hospital official, who asked not to be named because he feared more violence, said five people had been killed Saturday, their bodies left in a parking lot. He said 172 bodies had been brought to the hospital since Tuesday.
He said people were coming to the hospital Saturday to remove sick relatives so they wouldn’t get caught up in the violence.
