Five soldiers are missing after clashes with militants in central Mali at the weekend, military officials said on Tuesday, in the latest in a string of attacks on army and U.N. forces claimed by the Islamist group Ansar Dine.

Fighting broke out near the village of Tenenkou in the Mopti region on Sunday afternoon and continued into Monday, army spokesman Souleymane Maiga said.

Defense ministry spokesman Diarran Kone said five soldiers had disappeared, one other was injured, and vehicles were lost in the clashes.

In a statement posted online, Ansar Dine said it had ambushed the Malian army, killing and wounding soldiers and looting weapons and vehicles, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Ansar Dine claimed an attack in July on an army base that left 17 soldiers dead and six missing. It later released a video of five Malian soldiers it said it had taken prisoner in the raid, according to SITE.

The group also claimed responsibility for several attacks on vehicles that killed a U.N. peacekeeper and injured five others on Friday and Sunday.

Islamist militant groups took advantage of an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012 to seize northern Mali before a French-led intervention drove them back a year later.

The United Nations has deployed an 11,000-strong peacekeeping force, but the militants have reorganized and launched frequent attacks across Mali and its neighbours.

reuters.com

Boko Haram’s appointment of a new leader and his apparent rejection by the group’s figurehead exposes wide divisions among the Nigerian jihadists as they come under pressure from the country’s military.

The promotion of Abu Musab al-Barnawi, who is thought to favour more targeted attacks than the wholesale violence of figurehead Abubakar Shekau, was announced in the weekly magazine of Islamic State. Boko Haram, which has regularly staged suicide bombings in crowded areas, pledged loyalty to IS last year.

But Shekau appears to have rejected the new role of al-Barnawi, who experts say has been the group’s military commander and has also been on the radar for months as head of a faction favouring attacks on the Nigerian military.

In a 10-minute audio clip on social media, a person purporting to be Shekau laid bare internal divisions by criticising al-Barnawi’s reported view that Muslims can live among non-Muslims without taking up arms.

“I am against the principle where someone will dwell in the society with the infidels without making public his opposition or anger against infidels,” Shekau said in the local Hausa language.

“Anyone doing such can’t be a real Muslim thick and thin.”

Al-Barnawi’s splinter group is based northeast of Maiduguri, the provincial capital of northeast Nigeria’s Borno state and the epicentre of Boko Haram’s seven-year armed attempt to create a regional Islamic caliphate, one Western security source said.

From there, it has been better-placed geographically to cultivate links across the Sahara with the Libyan arm of IS although the extent of direct practical ties between the two groups is not clear. Many experts say that the links are largely symbolic.

In the past, Shekau has appeared in propaganda videos draped in ammunition belts and brandishing automatic weapons as he spouted vitriol against Nigeria and the West.

His absence from any such videos since March has sparked speculation he has been wounded, is seriously ill or may even have died.

Limiting himself to an audio clip is likely to fuel suspicions of Shekau’s reduced physical or operational capacity from the wilds of the northeast’s Sambisa forest, where he has been penned in by the Nigerian army.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, took office last year on a campaign platform to wipe out the group.

“Shekau and his clique remain in Sambisa, where they are under a lot of pressure from the Nigerian military push against Boko Haram,” the security source said. “It’s not existential yet but they haven’t got as much freedom of movement as they did.”

“FADING GROUP”

Boko Haram, whose name loosely means ‘Western education is sinful’ in Hausa, has suffered a dramatic decline in fortunes from 18 months ago when it controlled an area the size of Belgium and had Nigeria’s military on the back foot.

Under Shekau, Boko Haram killed more than 15,000 people, displaced more than two million and attained worldwide infamy with the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in April 2014.

However since early 2015 it has suffered numerous defeats at the hands of the Nigerian, Cameroonian, Nigerien and Chadian militaries acting either individually or as part of a coordinated regional force.

Nigerian military spokesman Rabe Abubakar said the latest Boko Haram’s leadership revelations were of “no relevance”.

“We are just focussed on clearing the remnants of the insurgents that are scattered around,” he said. The leadership struggles were “the antics of a fading group”, he added.

In the interview with IS’s al-Naba magazine, al-Barnawi said Boko Haram was “still a force to be reckoned with” and that it had been receiving new recruits.

The splinter group’s modus operandi appears to be targeting the Nigerian military rather than civilians.

That is in contrast to the bomb attacks on busy public places such as markets, mosques and camps for internally displaced people (IDP) that have typified its approach in northeast Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon over the last year.

“Under the Shekau reasoning, it is permissible to kill IDPs in camps,” said Fulan Nasrullah, a security analyst based in northern Nigeria. Such action was not sanctioned by the IS-approved faction, he added.

But despite its set-backs, Shekau’s supporters remained the largest part of the group, Nasrullah said.

reuters.com

Somali terrorist group al Shabaab on Saturday shelled residential areas in the town of Baidoa, west of the capital Mogadishu, hitting a hospital and likely causing casualties, the African Union (AU) peace keeping force AMISOM said in a Twitter post.

The al Qaeda-allied group, which wants to topple Somalia’s Western-backed government and rule the country, has been ramping up attacks on both civilian and military targets in recent months.

“Al Shabaab militants fired mortar shells at densely populated civilian residential areas in Baidoa town this morning,” AMISOM said on its Twitter account.

“One round of the mortars hit a hospital. Civilian casualties are unknown but expected.”

Security analysts have warned that the group could step up attacks, taking advantage of the distraction caused by campaigning for a presidential election due in August.

The group has also launched attacks in Kenya and Uganda which have contributed troops to the 22,000-strong AMISOM force.

In the most recent attacks, al Shabaab late last month used vehicle-borne suicide bombers to launch assaults on an AMISOM base and the headquarters of Police’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) both in Mogadishu.

The attacks left at least 23 people dead.

abna24.com

The European Commission has announced an additional €12.5m in humanitarian aid to support people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon as they face a deteriorating humanitarian crisis.

The commission said the emergency assistance would help vulnerable populations in the Lake Chad region, noting that €9m will be provided to support people in Nigeria, €2m in Cameroon and €1.5m in Niger.

A statement from the EC on Friday in Abuja, said the new funding comes as violence by the terrorist group Boko Haram has severely destabilised the Lake Chad region, causing the displacement of millions of people.

“When travelling to the region last month, I witnessed the plight of people in the Lake Chad Basin. Millions have been displaced and the number of those struggling to find food is increasingly alarming. The situation in Nigeria is especially dramatic,” it quoted the Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides, as saying.

The EU aid comes on top of the €58m previously allocated to the Lake Chad Basin crisis, bringing overall EU humanitarian aid to over €70m for the region in 2016.

The European Union stated that it had provided assistance to local, host and displaced populations in various humanitarian aid sectors in recent years.

It said its total humanitarian aid to populations in the Lake Chad basin and in the Sahel in 2016 is €216.2m.

punchng.com

A security expert, Dr. Ona Ekhomu, has warned Nigerian government not to take the appointment of Abu Musab Al-Barnawi as the new Boko Haram leader by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria lightly.

Ekhomu, who doubles as the President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria, described the appointment Al-Barnawi as a danger signal to the nation’s security.

DAILY POST reports that the ISIS reportedly declared Al-Barnawi as a replacement to Abubakar Shekau, after the latter failed to appear in any authentic video clip since 2015.

Reacting to the development, however, Ekhomu, in a statement on Thursday, asked the FG to place intelligence agencies, the military, law enforcement and citizens on the full alert to avert possible terrorist attacks in Lagos State.

“If ISIS gets to appoint senior leadership for Boko Haram then they are probably running the Nigerian terror group as a local franchise. Strategic decisions such as leadership appointments are made by the spiritual leader of a terrorist group. In other words, the appointment of Al-Barnawi might have been made by ISIS leader Sheik Abu Bakr El-Baghdadi himself,” he said.

Ekhomu recalled that under the leadership of Shekau, Boko Haram killed over 30,000 Nigerians in separate attacks.

The security expert also called on the Lagos State Government to create an intelligence fusion centre where all-source intelligence could be harmonised in order to disrupt terror attacks in the state.

“As a mega city, Lagos presented a tempting target for BH/ISIS and the state should be target-hardened in order to prevent any surprise attack,” he added.

dailypost.ng/

alalam.ir

A contingent of 850 Nigerien soldiers is preparing to leave Niger soon heading for Northern Mali under the UN Integrated Mission for Stabilization of Mali (MINUSMA), a security source in Niamey said Tuesday.

The first convoy essentially comprised of logistical materials left Niamey on Tuesday morning while the rest of the troops will follow soon, the same source said.

The 850 soldiers from various units of Niger Defense and Security Forces will form the 4th Nigerien battalion to serve under MINUSMA for a period of one year.

They underwent an intense 10-week training program in Ouallam, 100 km north of Niamey, on peacekeeping operations in conformity to the UN requirements.

The training ended on Friday last week and each of them was awarded a certificate during a ceremony presided over by Niger’s Army boss, Gen. Seyni Garba.

Garba urged the Nigerien soldiers to redouble their vigilance and to always be alert. He further asked them to always remain disciplined while in Mali, just as they had always been in Niger.

Niger deployed its first contingent of 680 soldiers in Mali in January 2013, to help fight terrorist groups occupying the northern region and restore the country’s territorial integrity.

Niger and Mali share a long border of over 800 kilometers, with millions of people on both sides of the border who share the same languages.

xinhuanet.com

Police recovered three AK 47 rifles and 178 bullets during an operation targeting a former Recce Squad officer on Thursday morning.

This followed suspicion that the man had been radicalised by al Shabaab and was planning an attack at the GSU Recce headquarters in Ruiru.

The suspect has been identified in police documents as constable Eric Ngethe, No 97861, who deserted his Job as an officer of the elite squad in 2014. He was a highly trained hostage and rescue officer.

The search for him was intensified after intelligence reports warned of a possible terror attack. He escaped without the weapons during the dawn operation.

Detectives from the Ruiru police division on Wednesday raided a house that the former officer reportedly owned in Githurai 45 estate but did not find any weapons.

“We only found literature material that suggested that the man was radicalised,” said a senior security official in Kiambu.

Police said the suspect had also been spotted at Riyadh Mosque, which was hit by allegations of radicalisation, further cementing suspicion against him.

It has been reported that al Shabaab militants have infiltrated security forces.

the-star.co.ke

UN Security Council agreed to deploy the force in its strongest move to date to try to end more than a year of violence

Burundi’s government has rejected the deployment of 228 UN police to the troubled African nation, saying a French-led UN resolution authorising the force was made without its consent.

The UN Security Council on Friday agreed to deploy the force in its strongest move to date to try to end more than a year of violence.

“The government of Burundi rejects every aspect of this resolution linked to the deployment of any force on its territory,” said spokesman Philippe Nzobonariba in the first official reaction to the move.

The UN resolution was “in violation of the fundamental principles required of the UN family and above all violating its sovereignty,” he added in a statement released late on Tuesday.

nation.co.ke