Boko Haram launches deadly RPG attack: ‘Deafening explosions all over’

“It was deafening explosions all over, as volleys of RPGs were fired by Boko Haram from outside the city,” said Malam Yusuf, who told CNN his wife is in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained in the attack.

The attack in Maiduguri, the capital and largest city of Borno State, killed 13 people and damaged at least five homes according to military sources, reported CNN.

“Boko Haram kept shelling the area with RPGs…Many people were also injured,” said Hassan Buba, a local leader, according to CNN.

Two Nigerian military officers say Boko Haram was reduced to using indiscriminate RPG attacks that would endanger civilians because the Nigerian military had already repelled their repeated attempts to capture the capital city.

“It was an (act) of desperation,” said one of the officers to CNN. “The attacks were ultimately neutralized, and the terrorists forced to retreat.”

At least nine people were also killed later in the day when a bomb went off inside a mosque while worshipers were present in Maiduguri, also in Borno State, witnesses say.

The name Boko Haram translates to “Western education is forbidden.” The violent extremist group seeks to impose Sharia law and became infamous for kidnapping, raping and enslaving more than 200 schoolgirls in the town of Chibok in 2014.

For years, residents of Borno State have been forced to deal with Boko Haram’s rapes, assaults, kidnappings, pillaging, bombings, abductions and mass kidnappings — and this latest attack is a strong sign that their ordeal is far from over, the new president’s takeover non-withstanding.

“Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns,” said President Muhammadu Buhari Friday in his inauguration address. “We are going to tackle them head on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us.”