Last month, five aid workers were abducted in northeast Nigeria, in Borno State. Recently, jihadists have reported that they have executed the aid workers. The abducted men were working for the International Rescue Committee, Action Against Hunger, Rich International, and the State Emergency Management Agency. Nigeria’s president placed the blame for the killings on Boko Haram, a Nigerian jihadist group, and vowed to take action.
Boko Haram’s decade-long insurgency has caused thousands of casualties as well as displaced thousands more, resulting in a humanitarian crisis within the region. Aid workers have been targeted by the group, particularly by a subgroup of Boko Haram called the Islamic State group. The jihadists reportedly uploaded video footage of the executions in which the hostages referred to their captors as soldiers of the “khalifa.”
Read More: Nigeria’s Boko Haram crisis: Aid workers ‘killed’ in Borno state
