Boko Haram fighters attacked the Nigerian town of Baga and a multinational military base nearby, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians and razing much of the town over several days beginning around January 3, with the assault and its full scale becoming widely reported by mid-January. Satellite imagery later revealed entire neighborhoods burned to the ground, underscoring the insurgency's brutal escalation.
Baga, a fishing town on the shores of Lake Chad, had already suffered repeated Boko Haram attacks by early 2015, but nothing prepared it for what came in the first days of January. Militants swept through the town and overwhelmed a base used by a multinational task force drawn from Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, forcing troops to retreat and leaving civilians defenseless.
Survivors described a massacre that unfolded over days as fighters moved from house to house. Amnesty International later analyzed satellite images showing roughly 3,700 structures damaged or destroyed across Baga and the neighboring town of Doron Baga — entire residential blocks reduced to ash, visible from space.
Estimates of the death toll varied wildly, from a few hundred by government accounts to as many as 2,000 by local officials and Amnesty International's assessment, reflecting both the chaos of the attack and the Nigerian government's reluctance to acknowledge its severity. The massacre drew international attention partly because it coincided almost exactly with the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, leading to criticism that Western media and governments paid far less attention to the far larger loss of life in Nigeria.