Last week Boko Haram entered the northern Nigerian town of Baga and began opening fire on residents. According to news reports, bodies were left bloodied across roadways, and those who fled into the bushes were chased and executed. Once the shooting stopped, some 2,000 people were reported dead in what Amnesty International is calling possibly the Islamic extremist group's "deadliest act."
"The attack on Baga and surrounding towns looks as if it could be Boko Haram's deadliest act in a catalogue of increasingly heinous attacks carried out by the group," Amnesty International said in a statement. "If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as two thousand civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram's ongoing onslaught against the civilian population."
According to The Guardian, most of the victims were children and "elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents."
CNN notes that the Islamic terrorist group stormed the town in trucks and motorcycles and literally chased residents as they fled, spraying bullets indiscriminately.
"Dead bodies litter the bushes in the area and it is still not safe to go and pick them [up] for burial," Musa Bukar, a local government official, told CNN. "Some people who hid in their homes were burned alive."
According to CNN, some 30,000 people have been displaced since the massacre, and authorities are still making arrangements to transport some 10,000 residents to a neighboring town.