Boko Haram attack: Police Officer Survives Gunshot

Oct 27, 2011 – Boko Haram attack: Police Officer Survives Gunshot

After few days of silence, radical islamic sect Boko Haram have striked again. Today, thursday Oct 27, 2011, three suspected Boko Haram gunmen shot a police officer (name withheld) at his Bulunkutu residence in Maiduguri, Borno State capital at 12.45pm.

Bulunkutu and Gomari Airport wards of the metropolis have become notorious in the past one week, as three policemen and two civilians had been killed by yet-to-be identified gunmen

An eyewitness, Mallam Haruna Audu, said one of the gunmen pulled out a Kalashnikov rifle from his flowing gown and fired two shots at the police officer, which pierced through one of his arms, after which the gunmen fled into the neighbouring  wards of Gomari and Pompomari, few kilometres away from the scene.

Audu said: “As the police officer was coming out of his Bulunkutu Tsaleke residence, we saw three men walking on foot towards the house and thereafter, we heard gun shots; and people started fleeing the areas, before men of the Joint Task Force (JTF) arrived the scene.”

Confirming the attacks and shooting, Borno State Police Commissioner, Simeone Midenda, said: “I was holding a conference with the Divisional Police Officers at the Police Force Headquarters in Maiduguri, when we received a distress call that one of our officers was shot in the arm by members of the Boko Haram sect about 1pm.

He was coming out from his house, when the gunmen attacked and shot him in the arm. Fortunately, the policeman did not die and was rushed to University of Maiduguri Teaching,UMTH, by JTF for treatment.”

On the attacks and shooting, Midenda said the police officer had earlier been warned in a letter addressed to him to leave Bulunkutu without delay, but the policeman refused to heed the warnings, until he was shot in the arm at his residence.

He said no arrest had been made over the attack.