A brief statement Tuesday does not say how the military got this information.
Advertisement
Claims by the army that it has killed Shekau have turned out to be false on at least five previous occasions.
The military said an “unprecedented and spectacular air raid” had hit the militants as they were performing Friday prayers in the sprawling Sambisa forest, the main base for a jihadist insurgency that is estimated to have left some 20,000 people dead and one million homeless.
Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman, a spokesman for the Nigerian Army, said that among the dead were multiple Boko Haram commanders, including Abubakar Mubi, Malam Nuhu and Malam Hamman. Evan Case, a screenwriter explained on Home Theater Forum that “fatally wounded means you don’t die right away, but you will later as a result of your injuries”.
Shekau previously pledged allegiance to ISIS in March 2015, and the terrorist organisation appointed the previous spokesperson for Boko Haram Abu Musab Al-Barnawi as the new head of the movement at the beginning of August. However, the United States withdrew military support from the previous Nigerian government, under Goodluck Jonathan, over concerns about a poor human rights record.
In the last 18 months Boko Haram has lost most of the territory it had controlled after being pushed back in an offensive by the forces of Nigeria and its neighbours.
He said this while giving a speech at the “Community Building and Countering Violent Extremism” event held at the Palace of the Sultan of Sokoto.
It also claimed some of the children had been killed in government airstrikes. In May, U.S. officials told Reuters that Washington wanted to sell up to 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria in recognition of Buhari’s reform of the country’s army. Recently, however, the group has also increasingly taken to attacking civilians.
Appealing for more funds, UNICEF said that, to date, it had only received $41m – 13 percent of what it needs to help those affected in Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon that border Lake Chad. Shekau, however, apparently rejected his dismissal in an audio message.
Advertisement
Later, a video believed to have come from him depicted about 50 of the kidnapped girls, one of whom was made to speak to the camera, saying several of them had been killed in military air strikes and asking the government to negotiate their release.
