African securityBoko Haram's deadliest massacre yet: 2,000 dead

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist insurgency, has been gaining ground in the face of what Western security analysts consider an ineffective, even counterproductive, campaign by an incompetent Nigerian military weakened by corruption and lack of professionalism.

The number of victims of Bomo Haram’s brutal campaign is mounting exponentially, with the latest tally reaching 2,000 dead in and around the northeastern town of Baga, on the border of the Nigerian border with Chad.

Amnesty International described the attack on Baga as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.

The Guardian reports that fighting in and around Baga, which began on 3 January, continued on Friday and Saturday. On 3 January, Boko Haram militants seized a key military base on the outskirts of town.

District head Baba Abba Hassan told the Guardian that most victims are children, women, and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.

The Baga campaign also saw the first use by Boko Haram of a child suicide bomber. The New York Times reports that a 10-years old girl detonated powerful explosives concealed under her veil at a crowded Monday Market in Maiduguri, the shopping hub in a city which is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency. The explosion killed as many as twenty people and wounding many more.

CNN reports that on Saturday two days ago, two more girls, believed to be around 15, exploded themselves in open-air markets in the area. CNN quoted security analysts saying that it is likely the three girls were unaware what the vests they were told to wear consisted of, and that the detonation was triggered by remote control.

Boko Haram has increasingly been using women as suicide bombers, at the same time that it has stepped up its campaign of abductions of young girls across northeast Nigeria. As was the case with the more than 200 girls abducted from their school in the town of Chibok last April, Boko Haram forces these girls to marry the organization’s soldiers, sell them to local people, or use them in its military operations