Jonathan enters Boko Haram heartland, vows to end insurgency

Maiduguri (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan held an election rally Saturday at the epicentre of Boko Haram's insurgency, vowing to defeat the Islamist fighters as locals mourned another 15 deaths.

The president's visit to Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Nigeria's restive Borno state, came the day after Boko Haram militants killed 15 villagers in nearby Kambari.

"What I can assure you is that if reelected as president, the problem of insecurity will be addressed," Jonathan, who is seeking a second four-year term in the February 14 vote, told his supporters at the rally.

"I am deeply disturbed by the number of people who lost their lives due to activities of some irresponsible people," he added.

Jonathan said he had assured local traditional and Islamic leaders of his resolve to end the insurgency.

The president ordered a minute's silence in respect of the victims of the protracted Boko Haram violence.

There was a heavy security presence before and during Jonathan's visit, the latest in a series of campaign stops across Nigeria, with hundreds of armed police and sniffer dogs deployed at strategic areas.

The president visited Maiduguri briefly on January 15, his first stop there since March 2013. The visit earlier this month was shrouded in secrecy.

Boko Haram was founded in Maiduguri in 2002 and remained largely peaceful until a police and military crackdown against its then-leader Mohammed Yusuf and his followers in 2009.

Brutal raids, massacres, suicide bomb attacks and kidnappings by Boko Haram have claimed at least 13,000 lives and driven an estimated 1.5 million people from their homes, mainly in arid northeast Nigeria.

Nigeria's military has been criticised for failing to crush the rebellion but soldiers complain they lack the arms and ammunition to fight the better-equipped militants.

Nigeria's neighbours Cameroon, Chad and Niger have launched a joint bid to combat the militants and halt their advance, and officials from Nigeria and those three countries met this week to thrash out details of a new regional force to counter the Islamists.

In one of their most-high profile raids, Boko Haram jihadists last year kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from the Borno town of Chibok.

"I promised the Shehu of Borno that we would conquer Boko Haram. I told him we would do everything possible to ensure that the Chibok girls return," Jonathan said. The Shehu is Nigeria's number three Islamic leader.

- 'They shot my children dead' -

Earlier a security source said that "terrorists" launched a dawn raid on Kambari village, which is less than five kilometres (three miles) from Maiduguri, setting the entire village ablaze and killing 15 people.

A woman from the village who gave her name as Kyallu, said four of her grown-up children were among the dead.

"They shot my children dead without any prompting. I had to leave the village with my grandchildren because we have lost our houses," she said.

"The insurgents also killed our village head. In fact, I counted 15 dead bodies," she said.

Maiduguri and its environs in the volatile northeast have repeatedly come under attack from the extremists who began their deadly insurgency to create a hardline Islamic state in the mainly-Muslim north in 2009.

Jonathan, a southern Christian, faces a tough election challenge from former military ruler Mohammadu Buhari, a Muslim, who is believed to have a cult following in northern Nigeria.