BOKO HARAM commits another massacre in Nigeria.
The latest attack, on Monday, followed a classic Boko Haram pattern: Dozens of militants wearing fatigues and wielding AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers descended on the town of Gamboru Ngala, chanting “Allahu akbar,” firing indiscriminately and torching houses. When it was over, at least 336 people had been killed and hundreds of houses and cars had been set on fire.
Can we please not call people who do this sort of thing “militants?” There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being a militant. It depends on the context. You could say the fighters of the French Resistance were militants. They were not, however, terrorists. They did not just randomly shoot people.
If you don’t want to call Boko Haram terrorists for some nonsensical reason, how about “mass-murderers” and “slave-raiders?”