Panoramica dei mezzi d'informazione islamici
The MiG Company’s readiness to offer its jets to Egypt comes amid Russia-Egypt rapprochement, strengthened during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Cairo in early February.
Last year, Korotkov said that his company planned to hold talks in Egypt over a Russia-Egypt deal on the acquisition of MiG-35 fighters.
Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked Shabab insurgents have killed at least 25 people in an attack on a popular hotel in the capital Mogadishu where government ministers and officials were holding Friday prayers.
Twin explosions followed by heavy gunfire were heard on Friday from the upmarket Central Hotel, close to the presidential palace, with the Islamist gunmen reportedly blasting their way into the fortified building before storming the complex.
An official at the presidential palace said at least 25 people were killed and the severity of injuries among the wounded meant the death toll was expected to rise.
Government sources said that the deputy mayor of Mogadishu and a member of parliament was killed, while the deputy prime minister and minister of transport were injured.
The hotel attack began with two explosions caused by a car bomb and a suicide bomber followed by gunmen who charged the building, with heavy gunfire heards as security forces took back control.
“The building was badly hit, the explosion was very big,” said police officer Abulrahman Ali.
“There were very many wounded people too, many of them seriously.”
Ali Hussein was close to the hotel when the attack took place.
“There were people covered in blood, I counted 10 dead bodies but that was only in one area,” he said.
Shabab militants claimed responsibility for the attack.
“Our fighters attacked the Central Hotel,” Shabab spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab. “The aim is to kill the apostate officials.”
Shabab rebels have staged a string of assaults in their fight to overthrow the country’s internationally-backed government.
The extremists say they are targeting government officials for permitting the deployment of foreign African Union troops on Somali soil.
United Nations envoy to Somalia Nick Kay condemned the “brutal terrorist attack” on the hotel.
“My heart goes out to those who have suffered. We stand firm with the Somalia people,” he said in a statement.
Three car bombs ripped through the eastern Libyan city of al-Qubbah on Friday, killing 40 people and wounding 70, security officials and medics said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the parliamentary speaker for Libya’s internationally recognized government, Aguila Saleh, said the bombs appeared to be in retaliation for Egyptian airstrikes on nearby Derna.
Three bombs exploded in Qubbah at a petrol station, the local security headquarters and the town council headquarters. Qubbah is the populated place between the eastern cities of Derna and Bayda.
A security official said the car bombs were probably suicide attacks, but no more details were immediately available.
“We are announcing seven days of mourning for the victims of Qubbah,” Saleh told Al Arabiya television. “I think this operation was revenge for what happened in Derna.”
On Monday, Egypt launched airstrikes on suspected Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Daesh) targets near Derna, a day after the group released a video showing the execution of Egyptian workers.
The internationally-recognized prime minister, Abdullah al-Thani, is based in Bayda, some 40 kilometers from Qubbah. Saleh works out of Tobruk, another eastern town home to the House of Representatives, the internationally-recognized parliament.
Almost four years after a NATO-backed war ended Muammar Gaddafi’s one-man rule, Libya has descended into chaos with the internationally-recognized government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani forced to flee to the country’s east and militias in control of Tripoli and other main cities since August.
The country’s main militias, including the Islamist-backed Fajr Libya (Libyan Dawn) coalition that has declared a rival government in Tripoli and has been involved in the peace talks, have not linked up with Daesh jihadists.
Amid the chaos, a number of Islamist militant groups have been active in Libya. A few have declared ties to Daesh and claimed high-profile attacks over recent weeks in what appears to be an intensifying campaign.
Source: albawaba
Following the capture of eight French nationals who are members of the terror group Boko Haram, a diplomatic spat has ensued between France and Cameroun, which has insisted on trying the terror suspects.
A top Nigerian intelligence source opened up to this day on the brewing diplomatic tensions between France and one of her Francophone allies in the sub-region following the shocking discovery that some French citizens are staunch members of the sect, a throwback to their membership of the terror group, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
According to findings, France was reported to have chided her former colony for insisting on trying the terrorists in Cameroun instead of handing them over to the French authorities.
When contacted on the discovery of French nationals who had joined the terror sect, the Director of Defence Information, Major-General Chris Olukolade, said it was a matter for the parties involved to sort themselves out.
“All I can tell you is that the matter is for Camerounian and French authorities to settle,” Olukolade stated.
However, a top military officer said the Nigerian intelligence community had previously warned of a growing foreign collaboration with Boko Haram.
He said other than Chadians, Boko Haram has a large presence of Arabs, Malians and other Islamists who have joined the sect.
“Now we have seen evidence of French and European participation. This is one major indication that Boko Haram has very active and sophisticated foreign backing. I advise that the African Union should take this up.
“France is trying to silence the Camerounians but Africa must rise to the occasion and take this findings seriously. They must not keep quiet,” the military source said.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian military has continued its onslaught to rid the North-east of Boko Haram terrorists, as a concerted air campaign by the Nigerian Air Force has resulted in the death of a large number of Boko Haram terrorists in Borno State.
This is coming just as military sources informed this day that the boundary town of Baga and to some extent Bama, might have been liberated, save for few pockets of resistance by Boko Haram elements and mop-up operations in both towns.
According to a statement yesterday by the spokesman of the Defence Headquarters, Major-General Olukolade, “A concerted air campaign by the Nigerian Air Force is ongoing in furtherance of the mission to clear terrorists from all their enclaves.
“The air strikes which today (yesterday) targeted the training camps and logistics dumps of the terrorists in Sambisa forest and parts of Gwoza have been highly successful as it achieved the aim with required precision.
“The death of a large number of terrorists has been recorded, while many others are also scampering all over the forest and out of the struck bases. Details of casualty will be determined in subsequent phases of the operation.”
Olukolade said the strikes would continue in other locations of the theatre of war, heralding the advance of troops and other elements of the mission.
In the same vein, the Nigerian military buoyed by the joint offensive of neighbouring Chad and Cameroun, is set to complete the liberation of other strategic towns in Borno State.
A top intelligence source informed that Baga followed by Bama would soon be freed from the firm grip of the terrorists.
“There are some small details to be taken care of, but the operations have been largely successful. You will soon hear the cheering news from the appropriate authorities.
“The Baga liberation is almost complete and mop-up operation phase is already ongoing,” the source said.
Also, the insurgents suffered heavy casualties when Chadian troops pushed into Nigeria this week, residents who fled the fighting told AFP yesterday.
Chad’s army said Tuesday evening that they had taken control of the town of Dikwa, which is about 50 kilometres (31 miles) southwest of the Nigerian border town of Gamboru.
The offensive deep inside Nigerian territory was a first and suggested strategy to tackle other rebel-controlled areas in Borno State, which is the terror group’s stronghold.
The Chadians are part of a four-country coalition mounting a regional fight-back against the Islamists.
“Chadian soldiers took over Dikwa from Boko Haram after heavy fighting on Tuesday,” Bababura Diwa, who lives in the town, said by telephone from Fotokol, across the border in northern Cameroun.
Diwa said the Chadians came from Gamboru, which they had previously recaptured, with heavy artillery power and overpowered a group of militants at Lomani village, 15 kilometres from Dikwa.
“When they came into Dikwa, there was intense fighting but at last they subdued the Boko Haram fighters,” he added.
“They killed many of them, including Abu Ashshe, their commander, who was notorious for seizing cattle in the area.
“I used the opportunity provided by the presence of the Chadian troops to leave the town. I was afraid to leave when Boko Haram took over the town for fear of being branded a traitor and killed,” he said.
Diwa’s account was backed by several other residents, who took advantage of the Chadian advance to flee the ancient town, which is near Boko Haram’s makeshift camps in the Sambisa Forest.
Jidda Saleh, another resident, said Chadian troops launched heavy aerial and ground attacks on the Kala-Balge area, particularly on Nduwu village, which he said was a “major Boko Haram stronghold”.
“The whole village was bombarded and it is obvious Boko Haram suffered heavy casualties from the aerial attack. Ground troops moved in later,” he added.
“Meleri, which has a huge Boko Haram concentration, was also bombed by Chadian military jets and then taken over by ground troops.
“By the time we left, we learnt the Chadian soldiers were on their way to Kushimori village where Boko Haram keep the livestock they seize from people.
“They have kept thousands of livestock there. They sunk boreholes and recruited people to rear the animals for them,” Saleh said.
Algoni Wal-Amire, another Kala-Balge resident, welcomed the offensive.
“Living under Boko Haram was like living in a minefield. You are always afraid your next step could be your last. I thank God I’m now safe from them,” he said.
As the Islamic State group tries to expand and take root across the Middle East, it is struggling in Syria — part of its heartland — where it has stalled or even lost ground while fighting multiple enemies on several fronts.
Signs of tension and power struggles are emerging among the ranks of its foreign fighters.
The extremists remain a formidable force, and the group’s hold on about a third of Iraq and Syria remains firm. But it appears to be on the defensive in Syria for the first time since it swept through the territory last year and is suffering from months of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and the myriad factions fighting it on the ground.
“They are struggling with new challenges that did not exist before,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
Kurdish forces dealt the Islamic State its heaviest setback by driving it from the border town of Kobani in northern Syria last month. Since then, those forces have joined with moderate Syrian rebels to take back about 215 villages in the same area, according to Kurdish commanders and activists, including the Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The gains have strained supply lines between the Islamic State group’s westernmost strongholds in Aleppo province from its core territory in eastern Syria. The Kurdish-rebel forces are now expected to take the fight to some of those strongholds, particularly the large towns of Minbij and Jarablus, as well as Tal Abyad, a border crossing with Turkey that is a major avenue for commerce for the extremists.
Around the town of al-Bab, one of the IS group’s westernmost strongholds, the extremists are making tactical withdrawals. Residents have noted a thinner militant presence in al-Bab.
The militants are also finding themselves bogged down in costly battles with the government forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The extremist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has been stuck in fierce fighting with the Syrian army near the Deir el-Zour air base, the last major Syrian military stronghold in the eastern province. IS launched an unsuccessful attack to seize the base last month, and it continues to try.
It is too early to call the shifts a turning point, but they represent the slow grind of the international campaign against the Islamic State group, which long seemed unconquerable as it seized territory stretching from outside the city of Aleppo in northern Syria’s at one end to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad at the other.
In Iraq, the combination of coalition airstrikes, Kurdish forces, Shiite militias and Iraqi troops have pushed IS back around the edges, but the militants succeeded this week in taking new territory for the first time in months. They also raised new alarms with the presence of their affiliate in Libya.
But it was in the Syrian town of Kobani that the Islamic State suffered its worst single loss — more than 1,000 militants killed — and much of its heavy weaponry and vehicles destroyed. The January defeat followed five months of fighting by mostly Kurdish ground forces and coalition airstrikes that left about 70 percent of the town in ruins and sent tens of thousands of its residents fleeing over the nearby border into Turkey.
After the loss of Kobani, signs of fissures within the IS group have emerged.
Bari Abdellatif, a resident of al-Bab who also has fled to Turkey, said friction between Chechen and Uzbek militants recently led to clashes between the two that ended only with the intervention of Omar al-Shishani, a prominent Chechen IS commander. At least two senior figures were killed because of the internal strife, he said.
“The prolonged battle for Kobani caused a lot of tensions — fighters accused each other of treachery and eventually turned on each other,” Abdellatif said.
Several other activists confirmed recent clashes between factions from different national backgrounds within IS.
Last month, a senior official with the group’s Hisba, or vice police, was found beheaded in Deir el-Zour province. A cigarette was stuffed in his mouth, apparently trying to show he was killed for smoking, which is banned by IS, but there are suspicions the official — an Egyptian — was killed by the extremists who suspected him of spying.
An activist based in the group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, said foreign fighters bicker over administrative and financial issues. Several militants have been killed on suspicion of spying or trying to defect.
“Daesh tries to portray itself as one thing, but beneath the surface there’s a lot of dirt,” the activist said, using the Arabic acronym for the group and speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for his security.
Earlier this month, the extremists dismissed one of the group’s religious officials in Aleppo province and referred him to a religious court after he objected to the immolation of a captured Jordanian air force pilot, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“IS is now beginning to struggle to keep its own forces coherent — and this is separate from all the external factors that are impacting it negatively,” Khatib said.
She said the new troubles have a lot to do with the fact that IS in Syria is operating in the context of a civil war where people become greedy and refuse to cede power to others.
“Even ISIS is not immune from the warlord phenomenon that takes place in the context of civil war and is being witnessed in Syria today,” she said.
In Raqqa, stepped-up coalition airstrikes in response to the Jordanian pilot’s killing has shaken the group, activists say.
An anti-IS media collective called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said the extremists have been forcing residents to donate blood after dozens of fighters were seriously wounded. It also reported that the group recently imposed a nighttime curfew and put up nighttime roadblocks to curb desertions by members trying to reach Turkey.
While foreigners from around the globe have joined IS, many disillusioned new recruits have left or are trying to leave, finding life to be very different and more violent than they had expected.
The Observatory says the militant group has killed more than 120 of its own members in the past six months, most of them foreign fighters hoping to return home.
“When we take all these little puzzle pieces together and we assemble our mosaic, it’s very clear that they’re having issues. … I believe that they are hurting,” said Scott Stewart, vice president of Tactical Analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence and advisory firm.
Faysal Itani, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said it has become more difficult for IS to make substantial territorial progress, but the group still does not face any significant challenge to its rule in its strongholds.
“ISIS continues to build support among tribal groups, and attract fighters defecting from other insurgent groups,” he said.
Source: rudaw.net
Coalition and Iraq forces have begun preparations to retake Mosul from ISIL in an operation that could begin as early as April and will require an Iraqi-led military force of at least 20,000 troops, a US Central Command (CENTCOM) official said in a call with reporters.
The official indicated, late on Thursday, that the timing will be based upon Iraqi and Kurdish forces to be adequately prepared for the fight.
This mission would be the biggest battle since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve involving US coalition airstrikes on ISIL targets last August.
“There is no organization in the world that can suffer those kinds of casualties and not have a tremendous impact on their ability to achieve their long-term aims,” the official said. “Mosul will not be east. It’s going to be a difficult fight.”
Iraqi forces have retaken at least 700 square kilometers of territory from ISIL since the beginning of their insurgence, according to the official.
Additionally, between Iraq and Syria five building partner capacity sites are running and close to 3,200 are training now. 2,000 have graduated from these locations.
“It is our estimate that the amount of equipment that we have put between coalition contributions and U.S. contributions, [is] in excess of about six brigades’ worth of equipment,” asserted the official.
Additionally, US and coalition forces are approaching a total of 2,500 airstrikes in which the official described them as a 50-50 split between strikes.
“That pressure that maintains on the enemy is still having a great effect on him,” the official highlighted.
Source: kuna.net.kw
The Islamic State’s beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, and Egypt’s subsequent airstrikes on Libyan soil, have relaunched debate over what to do about the mounting crisis in that country.
The situation in Libya — previously seen as a success of Western intervention and a victory for the heady, if unsteady, forces of democracy then erupting across the Arab world — has deteriorated steadily in the last few years. Libya is now a failed state ravaged by civil war, and a magnet for al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) recruits.
The question is what the United States and its allies can do now to stop the hemorrhaging. Many options have been debated, but none look very promising.
Another international military intervention, as the Italians and Egyptians have recently proposed, would be very costly, unpalatable politically, and uncertain to work. Backing one faction against the others, as some urge, is almost certain to backfire.
The current approach, which relies on peace negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, is unfortunately also a long shot and is unlikely to halt Libya from morphing into a terrorist safe haven teetering on the edge of a broader humanitarian crisis. At a minimum, that strategy must be complemented with a more serious effort to contain the spillover.
Libya’s lengthy and porous borders, a large unemployed and conservative youth population, the return of fighters from Syria and Iraq, and a surfeit of weapons raided from Qaddafi’s old casernes are turning Libya into a hot spot for would-be jihadis .
Libya is likely now home to more IS fighters than any other country besides Iraq and Syria. IS has actively sought to compete with al Qaeda’s regional franchise, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, for influence on the ground. IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has openly challenged the legitimacy of other groups, including al Qaeda, in Libya.
But the competition hasn’t exhausted their ranks: Both are fighting alongside and against locally focused jihadi groups such as Ansar al-Sharia, the group responsible for the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi that killed Amb. J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The spread of terrorist groups in Libya is a direct consequence of the collapse of the Libyan state, itself a result of the international community’s failure to support Libya’s post-conflict reconstruction. The United States and its allies that backed Qaddafi’s overthrow share the blame for Libya’s condition. President Barack Obama himself admitted in an August 2014 interview with the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman that the U.S. failure to help the Libyans in the aftermath of Qaddafi’s overthrow was one of his biggest foreign-policy regrets. Needless to say, U.S. and European embassies have departed.
The country is now divided between two governments. The government in Tripoli is made up of conservative Islamists, who claim the mantle of the revolution. The government in Tobruk represents more moderate forces and is recognized by most other countries.
Both sides have aligned with military forces — “Libya Dawn” for Tripoli, and the “Libyan National Army” for Tobruk. But all sides are fractured internally. To make matters worse, regional powers, especially Egypt, but also Gulf states and Turkey, have supported one side against the other — a fact that will make it difficult for Egypt to argue that its airstrikes were solely aimed at targeting the Islamic State.
Forces aligned with Tobruk have acknowledged help from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia in their “war on terrorism,” but they have denied the claims that the Egyptian military is conducting airstrikes at their behest and countered that Qatar, which supplied rebel forces with weapons during the initial revolt, has been supplying arms to Libya Dawn.
Libya, in other words, is now a proxy war for the broader conflict between militarism and Islamism playing out across in the Middle East and North Africa, as vulnerable to further IS inroads as Syria was a year ago.
Of equal concern is the drop in oil production due to the fighting. In a country that relies almost exclusively on proceeds from oil to pay salaries and import many basic needs, a continued decline in oil production could eventually portend an even more devastating economic and humanitarian crisis.
Yet despite all these grim omens, the international approach to Libya has changed little since Qaddafi was killed. Attention, resources, and the level of interest have all been limited. U.S. policy is at best unclear. In part, this is because of the crises in Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, which dominated the headlines in 2014. But it is also because the choices are so unpalatable.
One option is to intervene again to enforce a peace.
To work, however, this would require, at a minimum, authorization from the U.N. Security Council, much greater cooperation from regional powers, significant air power, and tens of thousands of Western troops — possibly more — for post-conflict stabilization. In other words, it would be a multiyear commitment akin to those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this day and age, Washington and European capitals are united in their desire to avoid any such scenario at all costs — in Libya or elsewhere. Egypt has called for a U.N. intervention. This might have worked three years ago, when Libya was at peace, but the United Nations is hardly prepared now for a forced-entry military operation.
Some observers have therefore argued that the United States and its allies should pick sides and offer military backing to the Libyan National Army and Gen. Khalifa Haftar.
But this is also unsound. Not only are the moderate factions far from unified, but the Islamists have deep roots and by many counts enjoy greater national support as the real heirs to the 2011 anti-Qaddafi revolt. At best, a strategy of supporting the moderates would succeed only in leveling the playing field and creating a painful stalemate that might be conducive to negotiation. At worst, it would alienate many moderate Islamic factions, intensify the violence, and turn millions of Libyans against the West for no gain.
Facing these dire options, the United States and its allies have settled on a policy of containment by default, in hopes that buying time will allow a breakthrough in U.N.-sponsored peace negotiations in Geneva. Unfortunately, this strategy is also unlikely to work.
To succeed, the Geneva negotiations need support from regional powers and political factions that can control their forces on the ground, not to mention that have a basic willingness to compromise. On all three fronts, there is little reason to be optimistic. A cease-fire announced in mid-January quickly fell apart. Regional powers like Egypt will continue to add fuel to the fire and are unlikely to agree to support a settlement in which the (non-jihadi) Islamist factions from Misrata are a major signatory. Even with an agreement, spoilers such as Ansar al-Sharia — and now IS — would almost certainly continue to stoke the violence with guerrilla and terrorist attacks.
In the best case, a successful negotiated agreement would need the backing of a large U.N. interim security force to have any real chance of holding. In other words, even with a peace settlement, an intervention of some kind would likely be necessary to make the peace stick — although a peace agreement would make an intervention much easier.
Given the dim prospects for a negotiated settlement that holds in the near term, more meaningful efforts to contain the crisis are needed.
More military assets from the United States, its allies, and regional partners — for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, border monitoring, and other tasks — should be devoted to Libya. These must be complemented by active political and diplomatic efforts to shore up Libya’s neighbors — especially Tunisia, but also Egypt — even while pressuring Cairo to distance Egypt from its proxies and working to bring levels of violence in Libya down overall.
At the same time, the tempo of counterterrorism operations within Libya itself will inevitably need to increase as the Islamic State gains adherents, weapons, and potentially other forms of support from “core IS” in Syria and Iraq. Here, the United States will have to play a leading role.
Whether or not the United States is prepared to do anything more in Libya, even on this smaller scale, remains to be seen. But the hands-off policy the West has pursued in Libya since Qaddafi’s death isn’t working. Four years after Libya threw off the yoke of a 42-year dictatorship, the outlook for the country has gone from bad to worse to dire.
Despite the many other problems in the world, something must be done to stem three years of hemorrhaging in a country that once promised to be one of NATO’s greatest successes. Otherwise, Qaddafi’s son’s prediction that Libya would become the “Somalia of the Mediterranean” seems likely to come true, with serious consequences for security across North Africa and into Europe.
Source: FP
Boko Haram has released a total of 158 women and children after holding them captive for three weeks.
The women and children were abducted by insurgents from Katarko village in Yobe State.
This was disclosed by the commissioner for justice and chairman of the state Committee on Rehabilitation of Victims of Insurgency, Ahmed Goniri while addressing journalists in Damaturu.
According to him, the abductees were freed three weeks ago but were kept in the custody of security agencies so that they could undergo screening to ensure that they were indeed captives.
The captives have reunited with their families in Damaturu, the state capital.
The Boko Haram insurgents were responsible for the kidnap of more than 276 Chibok schoolgirls over 10 months ago.
Since 2010, the group has targeted schools, killing hundreds of students and declaring that such attacks would continue as long as the Nigerian government continues to interfere with the traditional Islamic education.
Over 10,000 children have been unable to attend school as a result of the activities of Boko Haram.
The dreaded group has also been known to kidnap girls, whom it believes should not be educated, and use them as cooks or sex slaves. It has also been blamed for nearly 4,000 deaths in 2014.
Source: leadership.ng
Militants claiming affiliation with the ISIS took over the university in the Libyan city of Sirte on Thursday, leading it to suspend classes and postpone exams, a professor said.
The incident came a day after dozens of gunmen paraded through the streets of the Mediterranean coastal city, 450 kilometres east of Tripoli, in a convoy, witnesses said.
It also came as Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn), a coalition of militias that controls Libya’s capital and much of the lawless country’s west, said it had sent units to “restore security in the city.”
Social media showed photos of hooded gunmen in pick-up trucks and 4X4 vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns, brandishing the black flag of Daesh, which has seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq and is believed to have extended its presence to the North African country.
Witnesses said the gunmen had also taken over the once grandiose Ouagadougou Centre in what is the hometown of the late Muammar Qadhafi, where the then dictator once organised extravagant African or Arab summits.
An AFP photographer who managed to visit the city briefly, said the Fajr Libya and Daesh forces were keeping their distance from each other and that there had been no hostilities between them.
Last week, Daesh seized state-run Radio Sirte and several government buildings in the city, hometown of Qadhafi.
Sirte is a bastion of a group called Ansar Al Sharia, classified as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, which is believed to have links to Daesh.
Several days ago, Daesh affiliates in Libya released a video showing their beheading of 21 Coptic Christians, most of whom were Egyptian, taken prisoner in the country.
Source: gulftoday.ae
Chad’s army said on Tuesday evening that they had seized control of the town of Dikwa, which is about 50 kilometres (31 miles) southwest of the Nigerian border town of Gamboru.
The offensive deep inside Nigerian territory was a first and suggested a strategy to tackle other rebel-controlled areas in northeastern Borno state, which is the group’s stronghold.
The Chadians are part of a four-country coalition mounting a regional fight-back against the Islamists.
“Chadian soldiers took over Dikwa from Boko Haram after heavy fighting on Tuesday,” Bababura Diwa, who lives in the town, said by telephone from Fotokol, across the border in northern Cameroon.
Diwa said the Chadians came from Gamboru, which they previously recaptured, with heavy artillery power and overpowered a group of militants at Lomani village, 15 kilometres from Dikwa.
“When they came into Dikwa there was intense fighting but at last they subdued the Boko Haram fighters,” he added.
“They killed many of them, including Abu Ashshe, their commander who was notorious for seizing cattle in the area.
“I used the opportunity provided by the presence of the Chadian troops to leave the town. I was afraid to leave when Boko Haram took over the town for fear of being branded a traitor and killed.”
Diwa’s account was backed up by several other residents, who took advantage of the Chadian advance to flee the ancient town, which is near Boko Haram’s makeshift camps in the Sambisa Forest.
Jidda Saleh, another resident, said Chadian troops launched heavy aerial and ground attacks on the Kala-Balge area, particularly on Nduwu village, which he said was a “major Boko Haram stronghold”.
“The whole village was bombarded and it is obvious Boko Haram suffered heavy casualties from the aerial attack. Ground troops moved in later,” he added.
“Meleri, which has a huge Boko Haram concentration, was also bombed by Chadian military jets and then taken over by ground troops.
“By the time we left we learnt the Chadian soldiers were on their way to Kushimori village where Boko Haram keep the livestock they seize from people.
“They have kept thousands of livestock there. They sunk boreholes and recruited people to rear the animals for them”.
Algoni Wal-Amire, another Kala-Balge resident, welcomed the offensive.
“Living under Boko Haram was like living in a minefield. You are always afraid your next step could be your last. I thank God I’m now safe from them,” he said.
Source: dailyindependentnig.com
