Tens of Boko Haram fighters were captured during a military operation conducted by Cameroonian forces in collaboration with Nigerian forces in the Lake Chad Basin, between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, military sources have said.

The operation which happened about a month since the arrest of Boukar Kaou, one of Boko Haram commanders, with five other Boko Haram leaders as well as over 50 of the group’s fighters in Madawaya forest along the border with Nigeria on the night of May 10, helped to dismantle another Boko Haram cell along the Cameroonian border.

The assault comes after the group carried out a deadly attack on Friday last week that killed 30 Nigerien soldiers as well as two Nigerian soldiers in Bosso, southern Niger, near the border with Nigeria.

Although said to be militarily weak, the terror group that is affiliated to Islamic State organization, has multiplied cells within its zones of influence, especially in northeast Nigeria and within Sambisa forest, a natural reserve that the West African nation shares with its Cameroonian and Chadian neighbours.

Still on Tuesday night, a Boko Haram attack against fishermen left “many victims” in Hile Hifa and Darack, two islands on Lake Chad within Cameroonian territory, the same sources told Xinhua on Wednesday.

xinhuanet.com

Somali Islamist militant group Al Shabaab says it has killed 43 soldiers in an attack on a base of Ethiopian troops serving with the African Union’s AMISOM force.

An AMISOM spokesman had no immediate comment — the force usually says it is up to the troop-contributing country to announce casualties.

In the past, casualty figures cited by Al Shabaab have been much higher than official numbers.

“We killed 43 soldiers from Ethiopia in the fighting,” Al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab told the Reuters news agency.

He said “several” of the group’s fighters had also been killed, without giving a figure.

The base at Halgan town lies in a region of central Somalia about 300km north of the capital, Mogadishu.

Residents said they heard a huge explosion at the base and a heavy exchange of gunfire shortly before dawn.

They reported gunfire could still be heard at least an hour after the initial blast.

The group said it used a suicide car bomb and then militants exchanged fire with Ethiopian troops.

The group often launches gun and bomb attacks on officials, Somali security forces and AMISOM in a bid to topple the Western-backed government and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia.

In January, Kenyan troops serving with AMISOM suffered heavy losses when Al Shabaab made a dawn raid on their camp in El Adde, near the Kenyan border.

Al Shabaab said it killed more than 100 soldiers, but Kenya gave no exact casualty figure.

radioaustralia.net.au

A new terrorist attack in Cameroon by the Islamist group Boko Haram killed 10 fishermen from Lake Chad at the north of the country, local television reported.

The attack against these workers in the district of Darak is part of an offensive of the terrorist group, the source added.

The Nigeria-based militant group Boko Haram has increased its actions in the region. Last Sunday, the group conducted an attack against the southwestern town of Bosso, Niger, during which 32 were killed and 67 were wounded.

Boko Haram spread in 2015 to other countries of the region, such as Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Benin. These countries formed a coalition with 8.700 soldiers to fight against the group.

According to official numbers, the fundamentalist organization has caused more than 17,000 deaths and displaced 2.6 million people since it began operating in 2009 in Nigeria with the objective of imposing an Islamic state.

plenglish.com

Tens of thousands of people have fled southeastern Niger following deadly attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on the town of Bosso in recent days, the United Nations said Tuesday

“An estimated 50,000 people or so fled,” UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

The attacks beginning Friday against a military post in Bosso in Niger’s troubled Diffa region killed 26 soldiers, including two from neighbouring Nigeria.

A total 55 insurgents from the Nigeria-based Islamist group were killed and “many” injured, according to authorities.

Edwards said most of those fleeing the violence were walking westwards to Toumour, some 30 kilometres west of Bosso.

“Many people are reportedly traumatised and worried about their safety. People are sleeping in the open and urgently need shelter and other assistance,” he said.

A local journalist working with Radio Amfani told AFP that people began leaving the town at dawn Saturday after the gunmen initially withdrew.

“We trekked to Toumour where most of us are now sheltering with no food,” he said.

In Bosso, he said, the Islamist fighters torched “the military barracks, police facilities and local administration office before looting shops and carting away food supplies.”

Edwards said some of the displaced had moved on from Toumour and were heading to the town of Diffa, around 140 kilometres west of Bosso, and northwards towards Kabel awa, where a camp for the internally displaced is at near capacity with some 10,000 people.”

“The welfare of these people and others forced to flee the violence in Bosso is of great concern,” he said.

The latest attack was among the deadliest by the jihad ist group in Niger since it began launching raids in the country in February 2015 from its stronghold in neighbouring Nigeria.

At least 240,000 people have been displaced in the Diffa region since then.

UNHCR, which has not had a presence in Bosso since the Boko Haram raids began nearly a year and a half ago, said it was working with the authorities and local partners to coordinate the response to the mass displacement.

“A team will be on route to the Diffa region this week,” Edwards said.

Boko Haram’s seven-year insurgency has devastated infrastructure in Nigeria’s impoverished northeast and forced around 2.1 million people in the country to flee their homes, according to UNHCR.

The unrest has left at least 20,000 people dead in Nigeria and made more than 2.6 million homeless.

timeslive.co.za

British troops have arrived in South Sudan to take part in the United Nations peacekeeping mission, the Defence Ministry confirmed in a statement.

The plan to deploy British troops was announced by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron at a UN gathering, which took place in September last year.

As such, Britain said it would send around 300 troops to South Sudan, where tens of thousands of people were killed in a bloody civil war which broke out in December 2013.

The British forces in the young nation will reportedly carry out engineering work to strengthen the country’s infrastructure.

The UK personnel would reportedly be split into two engineer squadrons to provide “vital engineering work to strengthen infrastructure as well as further advisory support”.

“The arrival of British personnel clearly demonstrates our commitment to supporting UN efforts to improve conditions in some of the world’s most destabilising conflicts,” said Defence Secretary Michael Fallon.

Britain remains a large financial contributor to UN peacekeeping missions.

sudantribune.com

scmp.com

the-star.co.ke

The US State Department has warned that terror groups are planning attacks in South Africa’s biggest cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, possibly during the upcoming month of Ramadan.

Targets include upscale shopping malls and places popular with US citizens, the State Department said in a statement on its website.

Brian Dube, a spokesman for South Africa’s Department of State Security, didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment left on his mobile phone.

Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo, a spokesman for the South African Police Service, declined to comment.

“The US Government has received information that terrorist groups are planning to carry out near-term attacks,” the State Department said.

“This information comes against the backdrop of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s public call for its adherents to carry out terrorist attacks globally” during Ramadan.

The US previously warned in September that extremists may be targeting American government and business interests in South Africa. Given its lack of military involvement in the Middle East, the country isn’t often linked with Islamic terror. The month of Ramadan begins Sunday.

brisbanetimes.com.au

Thirty Nigerien troops and two Nigerian soldiers have been killed in clashes with Boko Haram militants in Niger, the country’s defence ministry says.

It says “hundreds of assailants” attacked a military post in the south-eastern town of Bosso, on the Nigerian border, on Friday night.

A counter-attack on Saturday morning allowed government troops to retake all positions in Bosso, the ministry says.

It says there were several dead and injured “on the enemy’s side”.

Boko Haram has not commented on the Nigerien defence ministry’s statement.

The Islamist group is based in Nigeria but is being tackled by a multinational force, including soldiers from Niger.

Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou has been praised in the West for rallying neighbouring countries to fight Boko Haram.

In March, six soldiers from Niger’s army were killed in a Boko Haram ambush in the south-east.

bbc.com

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said on Friday that it plans to have meetings next week to review its tactics against the Al-Shabaab militant group.

The Head of AMISOM Francisco Madeira told a media briefing in Nairobi that the meetings will be conducted in order to revise AMISOM’s concept of operations.

“During the meeting, we will develop a plan on how best AMISOM can fulfill its mandate of liberating Somalia from the threat of Al-Shabaab,” Madeira said.

“We will also discuss how best to degrade and destroy Al-Shabaab’s fighting capacity,” he said. The AMISOM official said that it is not enough to remove Al-Shabaab from cities and towns.

“We also have to flash out the Al-Shabaab from their remaining hideouts,” he said. Earlier in February, the Head of States of the troop contributing countries of AMISOM met in Djibouti to agree on the best ways to defeat the Al-Shabaab.

Madeira said that some of the decisions agreed upon have been implemented. “The issue of command and control as well as better coordination have been tackled,” he said.

Madeira, who is also the African Union Special Representative for Somalia (SSRC) said that the troop contributing countries have agreed to boost the capacity of their armed forces in Somali.

“Kenya and Ethiopia have agreed to contribute helicopters in order improve flexibility against Al-Shabaab,” he said. Somalia is slated to hold elections in August.

“The Somali leaders have agreed on the technical and political bodies to oversee the elections in manner that the election can be credible,” Madeira added.

In the 2012 Somalia’s general elections, the Members of Parliament elected by elders.

“However, in 2016 each MP will be elected by 51 voters and we consider this to a step in the right direction considering that Somali is coming from a deep crisis,” the SSRC said.

He noted that Somalia should have a fully fledged electoral process of one person one vote by 2020.

xinhuanet.com