Boko Haram
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Nigeria’s military has released 180 people suspected of being members of the homegrown Nigerian Takfiri terrorist group Boko Haram, including women who had been detained together with their toddlers and infants. The detainees had been held for months prior to being handed over in the northeastern city of Maiduguri on Monday to Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima.
Army chief Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minima, who handed over the detainees, said they "have been investigated and found to be free of all suspected incrimination." Some freed women said they are widows and others said they were arrested because their brothers were suspected Boko Haram members. Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in Nigeria since the beginning of its operation in 2009, which have claimed the lives of thousands of people.
The news regarding the detention of the suspects emerged as Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's government has said it was investigating a report by the London-based rights group Amnesty International, calling into question the Nigerian military’s treatment of the people in its detention. Last month, the report accused the military of bringing about the deaths of 8,000 detainees, killing some outright and claiming the lives of the rest by subjecting them to starvation and suffocation.
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The man APC Nigerians had claimed will put an end to the Boko Haram onslaught against civilians is reportedly helpless. Boko Haram Takfiri terrorists have killed nearly 200 people in fresh attacks on homes and mosques in Nigeria in two days, reports say. Early on Friday, the terrorist group dragged at least 11 men from homes in Miringa, a remote village in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, and executed them in the presence of villagers. According to AFP, the men had allegedly escaped forced conscription by the armed group.
These men had fled from Gwargware, their home village in Yobe state, to seek refuge in Miringa, another resident noted. In another deadly incident on Friday, up to 50 armed bikers of the group attacked Mussa, a village in the restive Borno state, opened fire on villagers, and burned their homes. “They killed six people in the village and they chased the inhabitants into the bush, firing at them... 25 people were killed in the bush,” said Bitrus Dangana, one of the survivors.
Later on Friday, a 15-year-old girl, wrapped with explosives, blew herself up in a mosque in Malari, a village in Borno state, killing 12 men who had attended the mosque for their afternoon prayers. In a statement released on Friday, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the latest mass murders by Boko Haram as the “most inhuman and barbaric.”
“These last desperate acts of fleeing agents of terrorism underscore the urgent need to bring to early fruition the efforts of the government to form a more effective international coalition against insurgency and terrorism in Nigeria and neighboring countries,” the statement read. On Wednesday and Thursday, the terrorist group killed at least 145 people and injured dozens others during attacks on homes and mosques in the volatile Borno state.
Boko Haram, whose name means Western education is forbidden, has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in Nigeria since the beginning of their militancy in 2009 that has so far claimed the lives of about 15,000 people. The terrorist group has stepped up its attacks since Buhari, a former army general, came to power in late May. President Buhari has vowed to curb Boko Haram’s militancy.
The militants have pledged allegiance to the ISIL Takfiri group, which is primarily operating inside Iraq and Syria. Back in February, four nations of the Lake Chad Basin -- Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria -- launched a campaign, together with a contingent from Benin, to confront the threat from Boko Haram militants in the region.
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Suspected Boko Haram insurgents rounded up and shot dead dozens of people in a raid in a town in northeast Nigeria on Wednesday, military and local sources said, part of a resurgence of attacks in Borno state in the past month.
"Many people were killed," said a military source. The casualty figure "may be very high," he said.
Alhaji Habib Kakero, a former local official in the town of Kukawa near Lake Chad, said the suspected Islamist militants attacked in the early evening and killed many people.
Bashir Ahmed, a member of a local self-defense group, said he had been told by a colleague who fled the attack and then returned to the town that they found 97 bodies, some badly charred because the attackers had set houses ablaze.
There was no immediate official comment from the security forces nor a confirmed death toll.
Boko Haram insurgents have killed thousands of people and left about 1.5 million others displaced in a six-year-old insurgency to create an Islamic caliphate in the northeast of Africa's most populous nation and top oil producer.
At the end of last year the group controlled an area roughly the size of Belgium but they lost huge chunks of territory when the military went on the offensive in the months before of a presidential election in March.
By then, the military said it had taken back all but three out of 20 local government areas previously controlled by the Islamist militants.
But the last month has seen a resurgence in attacks, many in Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeast Nigeria.
New President Muhammadu Buhari moved the army's command center for the campaign against Boko Haram to the Borno state capital after coming to power.
On Tuesday, gunmen attacked two nearby villages elsewhere in Borno state killing 48 people, Mohammed Tahir Monguno, a member of the lower house of parliament, and a police source said.
"The terrorists attacked the twin villages of Mussaram I and Mussaram II in the night. They went there in the night when the villagers were resting after the day's fasting and assembled them before opening fire on them. From reports given to me," the legislator said by phone.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who was inaugurated on May 29, has held talks with officials from neighboring countries Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin to set up a regional force to tackle the insurgents.
The fight against Boko Haram is also expected to be high on the agenda when Buhari travels to Washington to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on July 20.
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A mass of home-made explosives, found earlier at a deserted Boko Haram post, go off, killing 63 people in northeastern Nigeria. Nigerian vigilantes had come across the bombs during a patrol, collecting and taking them to the nearby town of Monguno, where they exploded on Tuesday, causing the fatalities. A handout picture taken on February 15, 2015 and released on February 18, 2015 by Nigerian army shows a Boko Haram anti-aircraft gun destroyed by the Nigerian military at the town of Monguno in the country’s northeast.
Multilateral offensives forced the Nigerian Takfiri terrorist group from the territories they had seized in the country’s northeast. Boko Haram says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government. It has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of the country since the beginning of its militancy in 2009, which has so far left about 15,000 people dead and displaced about 1.5 million. The militants have pledged allegiance to the fellow Takfiri group ISIL, which is primarily operating inside Iraq and Syria, where it holds parts of both countries. The Nigerian military, however, says the extremists are now confined to the Sambisa Forest in the country’s northeast.
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Takfiri Boko Haram militants have killed more than three dozen people and injured several others in a series of violent attacks on villages in the troubled northeastern Nigeria. Members of youth vigilante forces in northern Nigeria said on Friday that at least 37 people lost their lives and many survivors suffered gunshot wounds after militants targeted at least six villages in Borno state near the militants’ stronghold in Sambisa Forest on Wednesday night.
Sources added that the heavily-armed militants opened indiscriminate fire from the back of pickup trucks and set scores of huts ablaze by hurling firebombs. "It was really horrifying," The Associated Press quoted vigilante Ahmed Ajimi as saying. Ajimi also noted that he spent the night in the bush and returned on Thursday to help bury the 37 corpses. Many victims of the attacks are said to be farmers who had recently returned home after Nigerian army soldiers flushed the militants out of the area earlier this year.
Sambisa Forest is considered as a major Boko Haram stronghold from where hundreds of women and children kidnapped by the militants were rescued during recent military operations. Meanwhile, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general who took power on May 29, has vowed to end Boko Haram’s six-year militancy. On Thursday, Buhari met with the leaders of Benin and three Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) member states -- Niger, Cameroon, and Chad -- in the capital Abuja in an attempt to find ways to counter the rising threat of Boko Haram in the militancy-riddled region.
Military chiefs of staff from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon as well as a high-level military official from Benin also came together in Abuja to discuss ways to cope with the militant group. Some 15,000 people have been killed and around 1.5 million others displaced over the past six years.
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Senior military officials from Nigeria and some of its neighboring countries have held talks to define strategies for a new regional force against Takfiri Boko Haram militants. Military chiefs of staff from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon and a high-level military official from Benin came together in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Tuesday to discuss ways to cope with the militant group.
The meeting “points to our common resolve to work together to put an end to a menace that has become a regional and indeed a global problem,” Nigeria’s chief of defense staff Alex Badeh said at the start of talks. “If there is any time for us to rise in one voice irrespective of our differences, it is now,” he added. Troops from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon have been fighting Boko Haram militants in recent months.
The meeting between the military officials is being held in preparation for talks on Thursday between the heads of state of the five countries. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general who took power on May 29, has vowed to end Boko Haram’s six-year militancy. Buhari announced the transfer of the military command center from Abuja to the strategic city of Maiduguri, a stronghold of Boko Haram, and visited Niger and Chad to push for continued cooperation against the militants. Boko Haram started its militancy in 2009. Some 15,000 people have since been killed and around 1.5 million others displaced.
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