On Monday, November 19, 2018, members of terrorist sect Boko Haram, stormed a military base in Metele village, Guzamala local government area of Borno State and killed every soldier on the premises, except for one of the soldiers who escaped.
The soldier who managed to escape the onslaught from the terrorists told Premium Times the story of the ugly incident.
“The attack came at about 6 pm on Monday evening. When the soldier on top of the observation post alerted that a large number of Boko Haram fighters were advancing, we all got alarmed as we took cover and waited within the base in Metele”.
According to the soldier, the terrorists leveled the military base in minutes.
“The fight did not last for more than 45 minutes, but it was bloody because the Boko Haram fighters had more armament advantage than the soldiers.
“When we realised the fight would be against us, we decided to retreat from the camp, but it was rather too late. The camp was surrounded with barbed wire, and the enemy fire was coming from the direction of the entrance. We were surrounded.
“One of the drivers of the gun trucks decided to push through the barbed wire so that other vehicles could follow and escape, but the truck got stuck, that was how many of our soldiers in other vehicles and those on foot were massacred.
“Those that managed to escape with injuries made it on foot through Cross-Kauwa to Monguno where they boarded commercial vehicles, some even sat in the booth of the Golf cars to get to Maiduguri.
“Boko Haram made away with about seven gun trucks of the Nigeria army”.
The soldier also disclosed that attempts to evacuate the bodies of the fallen soldiers from the battlefield were repelled by terrorists.
“As I am talking to you now, we have about 70 corpses of soldiers littering the battleground in Metele and when we went to evacuate them on Monday, the Boko Haram gunmen came out in large numbers from all angles – so we had to abandon the corpses after just picking five of them. We left most of the corpses there as I am talking to you now,”
“We all flew because we didn’t know where the bullets were coming from,”
“We left our amour, tanks and weapons. They were all there. The village is still under their control.”
Since on Monday, November 19, 2018, Commander-in-Chief President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to issue a statement on the latest killings of the Nigerian soldiers.
His administration often claims to have technically defeated and sufficiently degraded Boko Haram as a fighting force, but the terrorist sect is still capable of mounting soft target attacks, abducting school kids and overrunning military bases.
