African terrorist organization Boko Haram attacked Baga, Nigeria, on Sunday, members of the Nigerian military confirmed.
Baga is home to a multinational military base, representing Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, though only Nigerian troops were based there at the time of the attack. An attack there last year left over 100 dead.
Sunday's attack went on for several hours, as the Nigerian military struggled against the militants. The military eventually ran out of ammunition and was forced to flee.
News of the attack traveled slowly, as phone lines are unstable in the region. News of a November Boko Haram attack in Chibok took several days to travel because phone towers were destroyed by the terrorists.
A number of homes were burned and some of the residents fled to neighboring Lake Chad to escape and may have drowned. “The canoes were completely overloaded and turned upside down. I saw at least three boats of women and children all dead that way,” a witness told The Guardian.
One local estimates 300 people are missing following the attack, but some of those may be residents who fled.
“They came, many hundreds of them, with guns, trucks and grenades. They burned all the houses they could reach and set the military base on fire,” another witness told The Guardian.
Boko Haram recently attacked a Cameroon military base and Chibok, the village from which they kidnapped 276 school girls last year.
