“Nigerian military officials said the air force struck while Shekau was praying Friday at Taye village in the extremists” Sambisa Forest stronghold in northeastern Nigeria.
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The Nigerian army has said the leader of the Boko Haram militant group, Abubakar Shekau, has been “fatally wounded” in a raid.
The report of Mr. Shekau’s alleged death came as Mr. Kerry arrived in Nigeria for meetings with President Muhammadu Buhari. And a new video of the girls seems to signal new pressure on the Nigerian-based radical Islamist group.
The leader of the Boko Haram group is believed to be fatally wounded in an air strike carried out by the Nigerian military in the country’s northeast, according to official sources.
The Nigerian Air Force on Tuesday said it has recorded another major success in the ongoing counter-insurgency and counter terrorism operations against the Boko Haram Terrorist sect in the North East. “But extremism can’t be defeated through repression or fear”, Mr. Kerry said.
Boko Haram transforms “the most vulnerable among us into killers”, Mr Kerry said, describing how in its quest to destroy knowledge, the group destroys schools, burns books, murders teachers and kidnaps students.
The US had been closely monitoring the fight against the Boko Haram which has declared allegiance to the dreaded Islamic State and attacked Nigeria’s neigbouring countries.
An estimated 20,000 people have been killed and more than 2.6 million others made homeless since the beginning of the Boko Haram bloody militancy in Nigeria in 2009.
The Nigerian military maintains that this current “Abubakar Shekau” is little more than an impostor or a dummy for the long-dead Shekau. Under Nigeria’s last president, Goodluck Jonathan, the United States had blocked arms sales and ended training of Nigerian troops partly over human rights concerns such as treatment of captured insurgents.
“While their leader, so called “Abubakar Shekau”, is believed to be fatally wounded on his shoulders”, Usman stated.
But since President Muhammadu Buhari took office past year, U.S. officials have moved to sell as many as 12 light attack aircrafts to the country, according to Reuters.
Kerry told the group that asset recovery is a lengthy, complicated process but the US government has lawyers and accountants working on it, Mumuni said.
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Shekau has also been embroiled in a leadership battle that may have resulted from the increasing ties between Boko Haram and the Islamic State.
