Nigerian troops foil Boko Haram multi-frontattacks, kill 40
suspects by Nigeria's military, while suspects were under
their custody, Nigeria's military said today it had killed
another 40 militants.
The army claimed they were killed in the course of repelling
a coordinated attack in three parts of Nigeria's northeastern
Borno state, the heartland of Boko Haram insurgency.
Boko Haram has been fighting for more than four years to
carve an Islamic state out of religiously-mixed Nigeria, and
remains the top security threat to the country despite an all-
out military offensive against it ordered by President
Goodluck Jonathan in May.
"Terrorists … of unknown strength attempted coordinated,
simultaneous attacks on Bama, Gwoza and Pulka" on
Sunday night, said Captain Aliyu Danja, acting deputy army
spokesman in the town of Maiduguri in Borno state.
He said the military had "successfully repelled all the
attacks, killing 40 terrorists in the three locations while
several others escaped with gunshot wounds".
Troops destroyed a pick-up truck loaded with bombs, Danja
said in a written statement. In a separate incident, air strikes
on a Boko Haram base in Kilani had "neutralized" some
fighters there, he added.
The military often gives high casualty figures for militants
and barely any for its own men. It is usually impossible to
verify its claims independently, Reuters reported.
It also invariably states that militants are killed in battle.
Rights groups say many killings of Islamist militant suspects
occur in custody.
Nearly 1,000 people, mostly suspected Islamist militants,
died in Nigerian jails in the first half of this year, Amnesty
International said on Tuesday.
Boko Haram has stepped up the number and scale of attacks
in the past two months, with hundreds of killings reported,
many of them more targeted towards civilians than in the
past.
Source:PM News
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