Inside Nigeria's Risky War

When the police truck pulled up at the morgue at the main hospital in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on the morning of May 9, the doctors working there explained that they only had space for two more bodies. The government was about to launch a major offensive against the Islamist group Boko Haram, casualties were already rising steeply, and the hospital's morgue — which could hold 40 bodies — was full.

That was not what the 10 grief-stricken police officers who accompanied the truck wanted to hear. Inside the truck...