Boko Haram insurgents killed at least fifteen people before burning their homes down during a raid in a northern Nigerian village on Tuesday.
According to a military officer and residents who managed to escape, the terrorist group reportedly urged residents not to flee, saying they were in the village to find selected targets.
"The gunmen killed 15 people, mostly youth vigilantes who keep watch on the village against Boko Haram attacks," Adamu Kolomgunna, who fled the village for the town of Maiduguri, told CNN.
The insurgents then reportedly hurled petrol bombs into homes, causing a fire that destroyed several houses and structures.
"The village has been deserted by all able-bodied men, leaving only the old and children," Kolomgunna said.
Boko Haram is one of the world's most deadly extremists groups, and has terrorized northern Nigeria since 2009, attacking police, schools, churches and civilians and bombing government buildings. The group's aim is to impose a stricter enforcement of Muslim, or Sharia law across Nigeria, which is divided between a majority Muslim north and a mostly Christian south.
According to the Nigerian Security Network, an organization monitoring the casualties surrounding the Boko Haram insurgency has said 2014 was the deadliest year so far in the terrorist group's insurgency.
According to World Bulletin, over 9,000 people have been killed as a result of Boko Haram violence in 2014, while over 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes due to the conflict. An estimated 940 people were killed in November alone.
"Almost every day in 2014 was marred by deadly attack by Boko Haram, unlike previous years," Police Chief Alhaji Yusuf Hassan said. "The insurgents started abducting teenagers and young men as foot soldiers this year. We didn't have all these terrible things back in 2009."
The group drew international condemnation in April when they kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, many of whom they said they sold into slavery.
In the latest raid, numerous Boko Haram fighters armed with guns and bombs stormed the remote farming village of Kautikari on motorcycles, shooting randomly and torching homes.
"The violence has become so bad that people don't have lives anymore," Sen. Ahmed Zanna told NBC News. "They cannot got to their farms, they cannot go to their businesses. It dominates peoples' lives every single day. They have no help from the army, the people who are supposed to protect them. They are scared, and that fear is real."
