Nine days after 2,000 Nigerians were killed in raids conducted by armed Boko Haram gunmen, scores of bodies still litter brushes in one northeastern town, a reminder of the carnage from one of the terrorist group's deadliest attacks.
On Jan. 3, Boko Haram ambushed the Borno state town of Baga with grenades and guns, shooting down residents as they tried fleeing to neighboring towns, CNN reported. Many were shot to death while seeking refuge in brushes. Their bodies are still there, but officials say they are unable to gather the remains because the town is still ridden with militants.
"It is still not safe to go and pick them up for burial," Musa Bakar, chairman of the local government in charge of Baga, told CNN.
"Baga is not accessible because it is still occupied by Boko Haram," Senator Maina Ma'aji Lawan told the station.
Also after nine days, over 1,000 Baga residents who tried fleeing their attackers by swimming over to neighboring Chad are now stranded on Kangala Island in Lake Chad. Those who didn't drown and made it to the island are now starving to death, Abubakar Gamandi, a Baga resident who was away during the massacre, told CNN.
"I have been in touch with them on the phone," Gamandi said. "They told me some of them are dying from lack of food, cold and malaria on the mosquito-infested island."
Chad officials plan on asking the United Nations to help move some of those stranded, CNN reported.
Boko Haram, which roughly translates to "Western education is sinful," has waged a relentless insurgency in northern Nigeria since 2009, killing thousands and displacing thousands more in an attempt to enforce a strict version of Islamic law.
The group has carried out countless bombings and kidnappings, but officials said the Jan. 3 attack was the group's deadliest one.
"If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as 2,000 civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram's ongoing onslaught," Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International, told CNN.