Actress and United Nations special envoy Angelina Jolie issued a statement this week calling on the United States and the international community to provide assistance to Nigeria in its fight with the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram.
Jolie, who serves as special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the U.S. and the international community must offer Nigeria help to “collect evidence and bring the perpetrators of these attacks to justice,” according to the International Business Times.
Jolie’s statement comes on the heels of escalating violence in Nigeria. Last week, Boko Haram insurgents stormed the town of Baga, killing at least 150, although local reports place the number of dead closer to 2,000. Approximately 20,000 people were displaced as a result of the terror attack, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Three suicide bombers, at least one as young as 10 years old, killed 23 people and injured scores more in two separate incidents the same week.
“Each new crime committed by Boko Haram exceeds the last in brutality,” Jolie said. “This is a direct consequence of the environment of total impunity in which Boko Haram operates. Every time they get away with mass murder, rape and the enslavement of women and children, they are emboldened.”
A Nigerian government official told IBT that Boko Haram insurgents still control the town of Baga, preventing emergency services from reaching the bodies of the victims.
“It is still not safe to go and pick them up for burial,” Musa Bukar told the outlet.
According to NPR, 143 Boko Haram fighters were killed Monday by Cameroonian soldiers after the terror group attacked a military camp in Kolofata. In a statement read on local television, Cameroonian Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said the deaths represent “by far the heaviest toll sustained by the criminal sect Boko Haram since it began launching its barbaric attacks against our land, people, and goods.”
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