No fewer than 37 bodies have been evacuated from Mafa, a community in Tamuwa Local Government Area of Yobe State following Sunday’s attack by suspected terrorists.
The estimated death toll came after an incursion by assailants on the community, where over 50 shops and houses were razed.
The police on Monday told NewsNGR it was yet to identify the extent of fatalities, noting that it was still investigating.
However, Daily Trust disclosed on Tuesday that the bodies had been moved to Babangida General Hospital ahead of the mass burial, scheduled at 10 am, Tuesday.
The medium further captured eyewitnesses’ accounts of the incident, who pegged an estimated number of fatalities to be 87, and a possibility of more, likely littered around the surrounding bushes.
The State’s Police Command on Monday revealed to NewsNGR why the assailants invaded the community.
The spokesperson of the Yobe Police Command, Dungus Abdulkarim revealed that the attackers had previously issued warnings to the villagers two weeks before the incident occurred.
He revealed, “Sometime last two weeks, some of the terrorists had surrounded a weekly market in Mafa that takes place every Friday to warn the people against giving the police and military intelligence or speaking about their activities, and this is a result of the effective community policing structure of the command.
“Even about that time, the vigilante in the community had arrested many members belonging to the armed men, and at the moment I am presuming that to be the reason for the mayhem in the community.
“However, we have begun an investigation, doing background work to identify the level of damages including the houses set ablaze and shops that were destroyed and looted.
“Some people were also shot dead but up to now, we do not have a decisive record of what truly happened and the level of damages.
“This is because for an onslaught like this, you cannot just come out and state immediately the actual number of casualties. There are probabilities of some to have been taken into captivity, and some killed in the forest, which these things (data) are likely to take you time to actualise.”