The Nigerian air force has claimed to have killed at least three senior commanders of Boko Haram in a series of airstrikes.
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The spokesman for the Nigerian army, Sani Usman, announced that Abubakar Shekau was “fatally wounded”, August 19, during a air strike on their stronghold in the Sambisa forest in north-eastern Nigeria.
“Boko Haram terrorist commanders confirmed dead include Abubakar Mubi, Malam Nuhu and Malam Hamman, amongst others”. Washington blocked arms sales to Mr. Buhari’s predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, partly over human-rights concerns such as treatment of captured insurgents.
However, “Abubakar Shekau” continues to appear in audio and video recordings released by the militant group, the latest being his appearance in a video released last month denouncing one Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the leader of a new Boko Haram splinter group that enjoys the recognition of Islamic State.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday pledged that the anti-corruption crusade in the country would be deepened and institutionalized to last beyond the life of the current administration. For the army, successfully locating and killing such high-value targets is a triumph for its intelligence gathering efforts which have often been overshadowed by its seeming adoption of excessive force against locals in the troubled northeast as part of efforts to fight Boko Haram.
“We have to strike at the root of violent extremism, and nations need to do more than just denounce dead-end ideologies”, Kerry said in an address delivered in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto state during his two-day visit to the country. The forest has been Boko Haram’s chief hideout for several years, and is believed to be where it is keeping a group of girls kidnapped from a dormitory in Chibok in 2014, an incident that sparked outrage worldwide. The militant Islamist group had no immediate response to Tuesday’s announcement by the military. The US Congress has yet to approve the sale, however. He told the Premium Times that many people managed to flee into the nearby bushes to escape the attack and are still untraceable.
Kerry said people join Boko Haram for a “sense of objective, of power”, especially young people with “no hope for the future”, and warned that military operations alone will not end the crisis that has festered for about a decade.
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“Some of the girls are crippled, some are terribly sick and some of them, as I had said, died during bombardment by the Nigerian military”, said a camouflaged fighter in an August video message, standing in front of some the imprisoned girls.
