During that period, the argument that ensued between the Nigerian Army and its Cameroonian counterpart made many Nigerians easily believe that Shekau was truly dead; a Cameroon military source declared, with photo evidence that the country’s army killed the Boko Haram leader following an aerial bombardment of his hideout inside Nigeria.
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Sani Usman, an army spokesman, said the strike was launched “while the terrorists were performing Friday rituals” in a village in the Sambisa forest.
At the start of 2015, Boko Haram occupied an area the size of Belgium but has since been pushed back over the last 18 months by military assaults by the four countries.
An army spokesman said warplanes struck as the militants met for Friday prayers last week at a village deep within the Sambisa forest in Borno State. The original misspelled The first name of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau as Abubakr.
Since Boko Haram pledged support to Islamic State previous year, the group appears to have split into two main factions: one led by Mr. Shekau and another-backed by Islamic State-led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi. “But extremism can’t be defeated through repression or fear”, he said.
The Nigerian government has expressed a desire for the U.S. to sell it military aircraft to assist in the fight against the terrorist group. 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”.
Officials from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, France, Britain and the US gathered in Nigeria in May to discuss the campaign, which the Obama administration has backed with roughly $200 million in humanitarian assistance for Boko Haram-affected populations in the region. The militant Islamist group had no immediate response to Tuesday’s announcement by the military. The extremist group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, outlawed in Russian Federation and many other countries, in March 2015.
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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. Baghdadi named Abu Musab al-Barnawi leader of Boko Haram in early August; Shekau had been contesting that appointment, however. But such sales were halted during the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan amid corruption concerns and reports that Nigerian troops had carried out flagrant rights abuses against captured insurgents and innocents deemed to be backing Boko Haram.
