No fewer than 3, 000 persons who were displaced by Jihadist violence six years ago were on Monday returned to their homes by authorities in Borno State, officials said.

This is coming after dozens of farm workers were killed in one of the deadliest assaults from the Boko Haram insurgents.

A UN humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria had initially said on Sunday that at least 110 farm workers were killed in the attack on the village of Koshobe and nearby communities but in a statement on Monday said there had been “several dozen” dead.

However, the governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, said more than 70 people had been killed and that the town, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the state capital Maiduguri, still had people missing.

The returnees who fled their homes in Marte in Lake Chad region in 2014 were packed into dozens of trucks and buses from Bakassi camp for internally displaced people in Maiduguri.

The return was of a first group of IDPs from Marte, the National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.

“I’m very happy to return to my roots which I left six years ago,” returnee Bukar Kyarimi said.

 “We need to go back and tend our abandoned farms but we hope the government will give us adequate protection from the insurgents,” he added.

“We are eager to go back to our homes but what happened in Koshobe… is frightening,” said another returnee, referring to the weekend attack.

Over two million persons were forced out of their homes by jihadist conflict. Most of them from northern Borno, pushing them into squalid camps in Maiduguri where they rely on food handouts from international charities.

The authorities have been encouraging people displaced by the jihadist violence to go back to their homes, saying the camps were no longer sustainable, despite concern from aid agencies that it was not safe for them to return.

Despite the security measures, the insurgents have continued to launch attacks on the fortified towns.