On the two-year anniversary of the mass abduction of over 200 girls by the jihadist group Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, CNN has published a video showing 15 of the victims, all wearing Islamic garb and describing themselves as “well.”
The government of Nigeria has claimed for months that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) affiliate Boko Haram has been defeated. Yet military campaigns continue, and this week, the army began bombing the Sambisa forest, a largely inaccessible plot of land known as the terrorist group’s last hideout.
The government of Nigeria is denying a report in The Telegraph that Boko Haram has offered to return the schoolgirls abducted in April 2014 in exchange for $56 million, noting it is still trying to verify similar reports, as well.
The Nigerian military has issued an offer to Boko Haram jihadists seeking to surrender to hand over their arms and join the nation’s first jihadi rehabilitation camp, where the government hopes to train the former terrorists to work and prepare them to reintegrate into society.
“If you cut from the back of the neck, they die faster,” said Rahila Amos, a Nigerian grandmother describing the meticulous instruction she received from Boko Haram to become a suicide bomber.
Rumors are flying in Nigeria following the release of a video featuring alleged members of the Islamic State-affiliated terror group Boko Haram, in which jihadists claim the group is still active and dangerous. The head of a regional youth organization claims the men are actors, paid by con artists hoping to extort the Nigerian government.
A mass abduction, even larger than the April 2014 raid on Chibok, Borno state, which brought Boko Haram to international visibility, occurred months later, Human Rights Watch alleges. However, out of fear of angering the Nigerian government, parents of the victims refused to report it.
A girl found with bombs strapped to her body who claimed to be one of the nearly 300 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from Chibok, Nigeria, two years ago was lying, law enforcement officials have confirmed.
In west Africa, trust in traditional herbalists significantly worsened the outlook in the unprecedented Ebola outbreak of 2014-2015. In Tanzania, authorities banned witch doctors entirely after years of attacks on the nation’s “magical” albino population. Now Kenya has taken a bold new move in eradicating the practice of unlicensed medicine: letting certified physicians advertise their services in public.
After disappearing for more than a year, leading to widespread rumors of his death, Boko Haram boss Abubakar Shekau resurfaced with a new video posted on Thursday. The formerly boisterous Shekau was subdued and gloomy in what the Nigerian military described as a “farewell video,” announcing that “for me, the end has come.”
Nigerian troops have killed a Boko Haram kingpin and 18 other jihadists in Borno State. The operation also freed 67 hostages.
A high-ranking British official has revealed that Western intelligence agents were able to locate dozens of the nearly 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014 months after the abduction, but refused to act to save them, citing the danger of multiple deaths during a rescue attempt.
Cameroon has sentenced 89 Boko Haram terrorists to death after a court convicted them on terror charges.
Two female suicide bombers killed over 20 people at a mosque in northeastern Nigeria, just outside of Maiduguri.
The fight against Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram has forced many Nigerians to shut down their businesses, causing them to lose money and their livelihoods.
The loose confederation of churches affiliated with the worldwide Anglican communion is experiencing growing tensions over the issue of homosexuality, with the U.S. Episcopalian church tugging toward the liberal embrace of all things LGBT and the African churches struggling to
The Nigerian Army has discovered several bomb-making factories in Borno state belonging to the Islamic State-affiliated jihadist group Boko Haram.
Anonymous Nigerian soldiers have told media outlets that a group of Boko Haram terrorists and their hostages, number 76 people, have surrendered to the military in northeast Borno state. The terrorists surfaced from the forests in which they were hiding “begging for food,” one witness stated, having chosen surrender over starvation.
The Department of Defense (DOD) is considering deploying military advisers to train local forces to combat Boko Haram jihadists in violence-tormented Nigeria, Agence-France Presse (AFP) has learned from a U.S. official.
The government of Cameroon announced this weekend that it had waged a siege on the town of Kumshe alongside Nigerian forces, killing dozens of Boko Haram terrorists and liberating up to 850 hostages.
Radical Islamic group Boko Haram has forced Catholics, Anglicans, and Pentecostals to unite and fight against the violence.
A new report offers some startling statistics on the devastation wrought by Muslims on the Christian population in Nigeria, with 11,500 Christians killed, a million displaced and 13,000 churches destroyed or shut down in the last 15 years. The 48-page
The Nigerian military has announced the liberation of 195 Boko Haram captives after a raiding they described as a terrorist-operated market and pharmacy outlet in northeastern Borno State. Nigeria has struggled to prevent the jihadist group from staging more terror attacks since the nation declared victory in January.
Business is booming for the romance novelists of northern Nigeria, the women who write Kano city’s “love literature” from their homes and defy the morality of both the region’s Sharia police and the ISIS-affiliated terrorist group Boko Haram.
The President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, asserted at a security conference Sunday that Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram has sent its jihadists across the country from Nigeria to train in Somalia.
Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in the city of Dikwa in northeastern Nigeria, killing upwards of 65 people and wounding another 150.
The government of Nigeria may have declared the war won against Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram, but new evidence has surfaced that they not only remain active, but have deep ties within the Nigerian military. Officials arrested two soldiers this week for having provided government-issued weapons to the jihadist terror group.
An article at the Long War Journal notes that the recent headline news reports of female suicide bombers striking on behalf of Boko Haram, an affiliate of the Islamic State, are no coincidence. The use of women and girls as suicide bombers in the region is increasing.
In one of their most heinous massacres to date, militants from the radical Islamist Boko Haram group slaughtered over a hundred victims in a village in northeast Nigeria Saturday night, including a number of children whom they burned alive.
The Nigerian government has been saying Boko Haram is defeated, but on Wednesday, a triple bomb attack killed 13 and wounded 30 in the town of Chibok, the scene of Boko Haram’s infamous 2014 mass kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls, source of the utterly ineffective #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign.
The hardline anti-terror and anti-corruption stance of Nigeria’s new government, led by the recently elected Muhammadu Buhari, may be setting the stage for the resurgence of oil terrorism by another group of Nigeria’s internal enemies.
The 3,000 Nigerian soldiers pardoned in September after being arrested for various acts of contempt, including refusing to fight Boko Haram terrorists, are refusing their reinstatement in the nation’s northeast, where the Islamic State affiliate is headquartered.
Four suicide attacks killed at least 29 people and wounded 65 in Bodo, Cameroon, which is a popular target for Boko Haram.
Jarasu Shira, a high-ranking member of Boko Haram, whom Nigerian authorities have linked to the abduction of more than 200 girls and young women from Chibok, northern Borno state, was arrested this week boarding a bus to southern Lagos city. Witnesses attest the man was disguised in a cowboy outfit to avoid attention.
Christians in Cameroon gathered around mosques to protect Muslims near the Nigerian border from Boko Haram attacks.
Despite rampant violence and clear signs that Boko Haram, an Islamic State affiliate, is still a threat to west Africa, the Nigerian government has declared the fight against the terror group won, and will begin a new investigation into the abduction of more than 200 girls and young women from a secondary school in northeast Chibok, Borno, in April 2014.
Lt. General Tukur Buratai, chief of staff for the Nigerian army, declared over the weekend that his forces have defeated the ISIS-aligned Boko Haram terror gang.
A sharia court in northern Nigeria has sentenced Muslim cleric Abdul Nyass to death for insulting Mohammed last May.
The BBC’s Jimeh Saleh returned to Maiduguri, Nigeria, where he was born, and traveled into Boko Haram territory with the Nigerian Army.
The Saudi execution of insurrectionist Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr threatens to touch off a conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims across the Middle East and beyond. Massive Shiite protests have occurred across the region over the past few days and have spread into Asia.
