DHAKA: Twenty-four vigilantes in northeast Nigeria were killed in an ambush during a botched attempt to arrest members of Islamist sect Boko Haram, one a member of their group and a security source said on Saturday.

‘They were ambushed even before they got to the Boko Haram camps,’ one of the youth vigilantes Masta Moh’d, who was not present during the attack on Friday in the town of Monguno, but had heard from several of the survivors, told media, reports The Jerusalem Post.

He said more than 100 of the vigilantes had participated in the raid, which turned sour when the insurgents, seen as the main security threat to Africa’s top energy producer, ambushed them as they entered the town’s outskirts.

A member of the government`s mixed military and police Joint Task Force, who declined to be named, confirmed the death toll from the incident as 24.

BDST: 1454 HRS, SEPT 01, 2013
RoR/BSK