Boko Haram ‘Butcher’ Recounts Killings-As culled from saharareporters

Boko Haram Chief Butcher, Zakari Mohammed Ardo, has said that he slaughtered “only five people” while operating with his fellow sect members.

Ardo, who  was yesterday paraded before reporters at a police facility in Abuja, said it took him two minutes to slaughter a human victim marked for the slab.

The suspect said he was the leader of a five-man team of butchers. According to him, the four other members pinned the victim down while he cut the throat.
The 30-year-old suspect, who spoke to reporters through an interpreter (he spoke in Kanuri) said he joined Boko Haram in 2012 and operated with the sect until his arrest on July 12, 2014.
Zakari Mohemmed was arrested by the police along Darazo-Basrika road, Bauchi while fleeing from the Balmo Forest.
He has since been under arrest until news filtered in at the weekend that he had escaped from police custody.
Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba said the police authorities decided to parade the suspect to debunk reports of his purported escape.
According to him, the suspect was still being interrogated and investigated.
Boko Haram attacked Gwoza town in southern part of Borno State yeaterday, killing scores of people.
The town’s police station, two churches, the local government secretariat and some other buildings were burnt down by the invading insurgents who shot indiscriminately in the down onslaught. The town is 135 kilometres from Maiduguri, the state capital.
A resident of the town Yahaya Mbursa recounted attack when he spoke with reporters yesterday. He said after setting the churches on fire and snatching unspecified number of vehicles at the Motor Park near the burnt police station, they fled into the hill tops of Mandara Mountains and the Sambisa Forest.
“The Boko Haram dawn attacks were very shocking and terrifying. The gunmen burst into this town through the mountain tops and western forest of Sambisa. Some of the residents had to flee into nearby bushes and the hills, near this market square.
“I cannot tell you the exact number of people killed yesterday while fleeing, but about a dozen were shot dead,” he said.
Another source in the town said: “We had to run for our dear lives when the gunmen attacked the motor park and warned us not to panic but surrender all the vehicles; including the ones being loaded with passengers.” He added that they took many vehicles away.
A former Vice-Chairman of Gwoza local government  Mr. Francis Mbala, confirmed the attack.
Military sources in Maiduguri to ld reporters that that troops in the Bama-Gwoza axis and the ones in Damboa town and Bulabulin Ngarwa village in Borno state, were on Special Military Operations against insurgents.
“The insurgents are on the rampage, as they have no any other place to hide now, other than to attack vulnerable towns and villages near the Mountain tops and Sambisa Forest,” the military source, said because he is not authorised to speak to reporters.

David Quammen raised an urgent question about the spread of Viruses in 2012. Pls read...

The next big and murderous human pandemic, the one that kills us in millions, will be caused by a new disease--new to humans, anyway.  The bug that's responsible will be strange, unfamiliar, but it won't come from outer space.  Odds are that the killer pathogen--most likely a virus--will spill over into humans from a nonhuman animal.
Spillover is a work of science reporting, history, and travel, tracking this subject around the world.  For five years, I shadowed scientists into the field--a rooftop in Bangladesh, a forest in the Congo, a Chinese rat farm, a suburban woodland in Duchess County, New York-and through their high-biosecurity laboratories.  I interviewed survivors and gathered stories of the dead.  I found surprises in the latest research, alarm among public health officials, and deep concern in the eyes of researchers. I tried hard to deliver the science, the history, the mystery, and the human anguish as page-turning drama.
From what innocent creature, in what remote landscape, will the Next Big One emerge?  A rodent in southern China?  A monkey in West Africa?  A bat in Malaysia that happens to roost above a pig farm, from which hogs are exported to Singapore?  In this age of speedy travel between dense human populations, an emerging disease can go global in hours.  But where and how will it start?  Recent outbreaks offer some guidance, and so I traced the origins of Ebola, Marburg, SARS, avian influenza, Lyme disease, and other bizarre cases of spillover, including the grim, unexpected story of how AIDS began from a single Cameroonian chimpanzee.
The subject raises urgent questions.  Are these events independent misfortunes, or linked?  Are they merely happening to us, or are we somehow causing them?  What can be done?   But this book is intended to be more than a work of reportage.  It's also the tale of a quest, through time and landscape, for a new understanding of how the world works.

Anticipating the Next Pandemic, New York Times, September 22, 2012