The Nigerian Air Force on Tuesday said it killed about 300 Boko Haram members during a recent aerial bombardments of terrorist locations in the North-East of Nigeria. While their leader, so-called ‘Abubakar Shekau, ‘ is believed to be fatally wounded on his shoulders.
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Sani Kukasheka Usman, a colonel and acting director of army public relations, described the strikes as “the most unprecedented and spectacular air raid”.
But the group was still able to post a video last week showing dozens of the kidnapped schoolgirls, many holding babies assumed to be the children of “marriages” with Boko Haram fighters.
The Islamist group’s leaders were attacked by government planes inside the Sambisa forest in northeast Nigeria on Friday, the air force said.
Nigeria has been battling Islamic sect Boko Haram for about 7 years now.
Speaking in the northern city of Sokoto, Mr Kerry urged Nigeria to address the root causes of the Boko Haram insurgency.
There was no immediate reaction from the group, which only communicates with the media by videos.
Heras says: “Boko Haram has invested a lot in Shekau as the face of the organization, so his definitive removal could potentially hit the group hard and disrupt its hold on people”.
The reports of the airstrike came as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Nigeria for talks with state officials about the problem of fighting Boko Haram. “Extremism can’t be defeated through repression or fear”. Omar S Mahmood, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies that is based in South Africa, said that “It is unclear if there is any other confirmation that Shekau himself has died of his wounds, and we should remember that Shekau has been claimed dead on a number of occasions before”.
Moreover, even though the Islamic extremist group leader was pronounced dead, his fighters attacked a village Chibok in northeastern Nigeria, where nearly 300 schoolgirls were abducted from their school in 2014, on Saturday killing ten people and taking 13 women and girls hostage.
In a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, Kerry promised to seek ways to support Nigeria in its fight against the insurgents, however, under the previous President, Goodluck Jonathan, the Obama administration blocked arms sales partly over human rights concerns.
But since President Muhammadu Buhari took office past year, USA officials have moved to sell as many as 12 light attack aircrafts to the country, according to Reuters.
Shekau’s fate has been the subject of speculation recently amid claims he had been replaced by Sheikh Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the group’s former spokesman.
Kerry “made very, very strong commitments to the (Nigerian) government that we are going to look at what we can do differently”, the official said, adding that the package for the aircraft was still being considered and needed congressional approval.
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Meanwhile, a mob in northern Nigeria has killed eight people after torching the house of a man who tried to save a Christian student accused of blasphemy, police said Tuesday.
