Several key figures in Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgent group were killed in an air strike, the Nigerian Air Force announced on Tuesday, adding the Islamist’s leader Abubakar Shekau may have been among the dead.
Advertisement
The President said terrorism is not static and Nigeria’s response must therefore be dynamic and versatile. The Nigerian military has reported Shekau’s death in the past, only to have a man purporting to be him surface later, apparently unharmed, in video statements.
Shekau has led Boko Haram since 2009, although his grip was recently loosened after Islamic State leaders named an alternative leader for a Boko Haram splinter group.
Loss Off Your Belly Fats, Upper Arm Fat and Body FatsIn 2weeks Time.
It claims the group’s elusive leader, Abubakar Shekau, who has a bounty on his head, has been fatally wounded in the raids which were carried out on Friday.
Who injured one of the Boko Haram leaders Shekau?
The Nigerian claim comes as John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, visits the country for talks expected to focus on the fight against Boko Haram, which launched an armed campaign in 2009.
Speaking in the northern city of Sokoto, Mr Kerry urged Nigeria to address the root causes of the Boko Haram insurgency.
Boko Haram, which seeks to impose a strict Islamic law in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, has killed about 20,000 people and forced at least 2.6 million others to flee their homes since 2009. It has been marked by deadly attacks and suicide bombings at schools, mosques and marketplaces and mass abductions including almost 300 schoolgirls taken from a remote school in northeastern Chibok town in April 2014.
The militants, believed to be still holding more than 200 of the girls they had kidnapped, demanded the government release some of its fighters in exchange for the girls.
Advertisement
Boko Haram is based in the northeastern state of Borno, where it has conducted a series of violent terror attacks. He had pledged the group’s allegiance to the Islamic State group past year, giving IS its first franchise in sub-Saharan Africa.
