In a renewed drive to crush the fighting will of Boko Haram insurgents, the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has deployed additional combat platforms to the North East in support of the ongoing counter-insurgency operation codenamed ‘Operation Lafiya Dole’.

The new deployment came on the heels of the recent visit of the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadiq  Abubakar to the operational areas.

The newly deployed platforms include the F-7Ni fighter aircraft, Mi-24/35 attack helicopters, Agusta 109 LUH, Supa Puma Combat Support helicopter and ATR-42 surveillance aircraft, which had been away for scheduled maintenance.

The provision of additional platforms in the North-East is in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s mandate to bring an end to insurgency in the North-East.

The new deployment is aimed at boosting existing military efforts to defeat the Boko Haram terrorists.

It is also expected to enhance the capability of the Nigerian Armed Forces to fight in a more proactive and efficient manner.

http://sunnewsonline.com/new/boko-haram-air-force-boosts-operations-with-combat-aircraft/

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on Tuesday summoned the Libyan military attaché in Khartoum (above in the photo) in protest against the Tobruk government’s supporting and arming of rebels from the Sudan Liberation Movement / Minni Minnawi (SLM-MM).

Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported a spokesman for the Sudanese Armed Forces, Colonel Al-Sawarmi Khaled Sa’ad, as saying that the participation of SLM-MM fighters in the Libyan conflict alongside the forces of the retired General Khalifa Haftar poses a real threat to Sudan’s national security. particularly in Darfur.

“The participation of the SLM-MM in the Libyan conflict encourages rebel groups to destabilise security of citizens through forced recruitment and looting,” he stressed. “It is known that SLM-MM is considered an armed rebel group that carries out hostile actions inside Sudan’s territory,” the Colonel added.

On 2 August Sudan announced that Libya has withdrawn from the joint forces formed over a year ago by the two countries to monitor their common borders and curb human trafficking and terrorism.

Financial problems have led the Somali pirate groups to have largely disbanded. The problem is that no large ships taken (and ransomed) since May 2012. The pirates captured 14 ships in 2012 . In 2011 28 were taken and before that in 2010 47 and in 2009 there were 46. Each of these ships yielded, on average, several million dollars in ransom. That kind of money attracted a lot more people to the business. Lack of that kind of money led the major pirate gangs to disband. Despite that shipping companies have been warned to maintain the expensive security measures they have been using until the “pirate coast” of Somalia is cleared of warlords, Islamic terrorists and criminal gangs. At that point the shipping companies can eliminate the expensive security measures and people living in East Africa and dependent on goods imported via ship will see prices go down to pre-2006 levels. The cost of the additional anti-piracy measures was passed on to consumers and it is noticed.

Meanwhile piracy has shifted to Southeast Asia and the coast of Nigeria, where 13 small tankers and cargo ships were taken during the first half of 2015. During that period pirates attacked 134 ships compared to 116 for the first half of 2014. Most of these attacks are robbery and assault on crews as well as kidnapping of a few officers. In the first half of 2015 pirates temporarily held (and robbed) 250 merchant sailors, assaulted 14, (injured nine and killed one) and kidnapped ten for ransom.

Meanwhile it’s been so bad for the Somali pirates that even taking smaller fishing ships and dhows (small local cargo ships of traditional construction) has become more difficult. The collapse of the Somali pirates since 2012 was no accident. It was all a matter of organization, international cooperation and innovation. It all began back in 2009 when 80 seafaring nations formed (with the help of a UN resolution) the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia. The most visible aspect of the Contact Group was the organization of an anti-piracy patrol. This came to consist of over two dozen warships and several dozen manned and unmanned aircraft, as well as support from space satellites and major intelligence and police agencies.

The anti-piracy patrol nations came up with more and more solutions than the pirates could handle. Thus the pirates found themselves with fewer and fewer options and opportunities. The most visible result for the pirates was that ships became more difficult to find, board and capture. That was because since 2011 more and more merchant ships trained their crews to deal with pirates. This involved basic stuff like paying attention to Contact Group bulletins on piracy off Somalia and posting more lookouts when in waters designated as “pirate infested.” The most valuable ships carried armed guards who fired back at approaching pirates and that has always driven the pirates away. The pirates eventually began operating as far east as the coast of India and ships that did not pay attention to Contact Group bulletins sometimes found themselves under pirate attack where they didn’t expect it. This was handled with expanded patrols, especially using manned aircraft and UAVs. The naval and air patrols became more efficient and effective and there was more and more cooperation between the ships from dozens of nations contributing to the patrol.

One of the more unnerving tactics was monitoring the pirate ports and following ships that left. UAVs or ships would observe these vessels and once they were in international waters (22 kilometers from the Somali coast) board and search any suspected of being pirates. If weapons and boarding equipment was found, the pirates were detailed, taken back to Somalia and left on a beach. Their boat was sunk at sea, along with their weapons and tools. Documents found on the boat were passed on to intelligence specialists. This degree of scrutiny was more than the pirates could handle. The pirates needed cash to keep operating as each multi-million dollar ransom quickly disappeared into the pockets of the pirates and their financiers and suppliers. Few of the pirate leaders wanted to invest their newly acquired wealth in keeping the level of activity where it had been until 2012, when it became clear that capturing more ships was frustratingly difficult and eventually nearly impossible. So the financing of the pirate gangs disappeared and most of the pirate gangs dissolved or went back to smuggling people to Yemen or what many of the pirates originally did; fishing.

Life was not difficult just for the pirates, but also for their financial advisors and suppliers (of cash, supplies and information.) Eventually the pirates found there were few people they could trust or rely on and the once lucrative pirate “industry” in northern Somalia collapsed. Currently the pirates are not holding any ships or sailors they can get a ransom for. Some pirates are still there, and until this generation dies out there are still men who remember how lucrative it could be when there wasn’t such an efficient Piracy Patrol out there. For that reason the Piracy Patrol keeps getting extended another year, and will probably continue for a few more. The seafaring nations are hoping that real government will return to Somalia, a government that will make it impossible for pirates to anchor hijacked ships off the coast without fear of interference by local police or coast guard.

These days the ships are most in danger of hijacking while off West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. Most of the pirates there are Nigerians and they attack and briefly hijack ships that are vulnerable. The Nigerian pirates have no safe place to keep captured ships while a large ransom is negotiated. Instead they rob ships they attack and quickly leave. In some cases they arrange to hijack much of the cargo, usually at sea, by transferring to another ship at night and then scampering away before the navy or police show up. This temporary hijacking is also popular in Southeast Asia, but not nearly as expensive as it was off the Somali coast.

At least five people have been killed in Cameroon during an attack blamed on Nigerian terror group Boko Haram. The five bodies were found in the Logone-et-Chari area, in the country’s Extreme-Nord Province. A member of the Cameroon Air Force was also killed in Afade by friendly fire, according to news agency L’Oeil du Sahel.

The latest terror attack occurred a few days after Cameroon forces killed at least 10 militants after entering the village of Ashigashia, on the border with Nigeria. The village had been occupied by Boko Haram forces for three weeks in 2014, before Cameroonian forces recaptured it.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people in northern Nigeria and neighbouring countries since its insurgence became violent in 2009. The Islamist outfit, which aims to establish an Islamic caliphate, often carries out attacks in Cameroon, which is involved in a regional offensive also comprising troops from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Benin.

In July, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari visited Cameroon to strengthen cooperation between the two the countries and improve relations that had deteriorated over land disputes in 1990s. Cameroon also announced it would send 2,000 military reinforcements to the north of the country, on the border with Nigeria, following deadly attacks blamed on Boko Haram that left hundreds dead.

In August, Cameroonian authorities arrested two suspected Boko Haram members disguised as female refugees. The men, who were carrying explosives in their luggage, were stopped at the Minawao refugee camp in the north of the country, near the border with Nigeria. The country is also believed to have expelled some 12,000 Nigerian refugees who had fled Nigeria due to Boko Haram violence.

It is believed that the group recently appointed a new leader after Abubakar Shekau failed to appear in the group’s latest propaganda videos, triggering speculations on his fate. The announcement was made by Chad’s President Idriss Deby. Neither Boko Haram nor the Nigerian government have yet confirmed that change in the leadership.

A Colombian navy patrol boat has joined the European Union’s counter-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia, Spain’s defence ministry, which leads the force, said Wednesday.

The patrol boat, the “7 de Agosto”, joined Operation Atalanta on Saturday after undergoing combat certification by the Spanish navy in the Bay of Cadiz in southern Spain, the ministry said in a statement.

“The experience will serve as a model for the future integration of other navies,” it added.

Spain in May took over the rotating helm of Operation Atalanta, which was launched by the EU in December 2008 to protect World Food Programme vessels delivering food aid to displaced people in Somalia, as well as to combat piracy off the Somali coast.

The force is mainly made up of EU member states. Norway was the first non-EU country to contribute to Operation Atalanta with a warship in 2009.

Last year Ukraine contributed a warship while New Zealand sent a maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft to the force.

A Spanish navy liaison team will be on board the Colombian navy patrol boat, which has a crew of 65 people, to help coordinate day to day operations.

Pirates operating from the Somali coast have raked in millions of dollars in ransoms from hijacking ships.

At the height of Somali piracy in January 2011, 736 hostages and 32 ships were being held by pirates, according to the EU’s External Action Service.

But over the past three years security for vessels and their crews off the coast of Somalia has improved significantly, with no merchant ship being pirated since May 2012.

Two gunmen wearing turbans attacked a bus station in the Malian capital late on Wednesday, seriously wounding a police officer and another person, security sources and a witnesses said.

An intelligence source earlier told Reuters that two police officers had died in the attack. There was no official comment from the government.

The raid is likely to raise tension in Mali, a country that has seen a growing number of attacks by Islamists linked to al Qaeda and new militant groups that appear to be mounting a campaign against the U.N. mission and Mali’s security forces.

“I saw two men wearing turbans on foot firing in the air and walking in the direction of the police post (at the bus station),” said a witness who declined to be identified.

“They entered the police post firing. Then they left and fired inside the deserted bus station. Everyone had fled,” the witness said.

Security forces cordoned off the area and searched cars on a nearby main road, residents said.

Mali’s northern region has seen a resurgence of attacks by armed groups as well as Islamist militants who briefly held the area until they were scattered by a French military intervention in 2013.

Malian authorities also blame a new armed group called the Massina Liberation Front for attacks in the central Mopti region.

Militant group al-Mourabitoun, which is linked to al Qaeda, on Monday claimed responsibility for a hotel siege in central Mali at the weekend in which 17 people died.

The United Nations has brokered a tenuous peace between Tuareg separatists and the government.

A bomb blast killed at least 24 people in north-eastern Nigeria and hundreds of fighters invaded a town across the border in Cameroon in attacks Tuesday that witnesses and officials blame on Boko Haram Islamic extremists.

These are the latest in a string of bombings and village raids that have killed hundreds in recent weeks as officials promise the deployment of a regional army to halt the Nigerian-born Islamic uprising that has killed some 20,000 in six years and spilled across the West African nation’s borders.

In Cameroon, troops repelled an attack on Ashigashia, killing 10 and forcing the insurgents to retreat, said military spokesman Col. Jaco Kodji. Two soldiers were wounded but no civilians were reported injured, he said.

In the north-eastern Nigerian village of Sabon Gari, civilian defence volunteers collected bodies and body parts of 24 people who died in an explosion around midday, said the group’s spokesman Abbas Gava. Almost all victims are believed to be traders at the market, Gava said.

A nurse at Biu hospital 40 km away said they received more than 20 bodies burned beyond recognition and are treating 41 survivors.

A regional army of 8,750 troops from five nations was supposed to be deployed in November but has been delayed. Nigeria’s new President Muhammadu Buhari, who was inaugurated at the end of May, had pledged the force would be active by the end of July. Delays have been blamed on funding and uneasy relations between Nigeria and its neighbours.

The U.S. “strongly condemns” the attack on the market and believes “the eople of northern Nigeria deserve to live free from violence and from terror,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. Kirby said the U.S. would continue to provide a range of counter-terrorism assistance to help Nigeria and its regional partners fight against Boko Haram.

A deadly hostage drama at a Mali hotel in which 13 people died — including five UN workers — was claimed today by fighters linked to the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadi leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

A radical associated with militant Malian Islamic leader Amadou Koufa said he gave his “blessing” for the attack on the Byblos Hotel in the central town of Sevare.

Koufa has ties to Belmokhtar — known as “The Uncatchable” — the former head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) who now leads his own extremist Al-Murabitoun group.

“The hand of Allah has guided the mujahedeen of Sevare against the enemies of Islam,” Souleyman Mohamed Kennen told an AFP reporter in Bamako during a brief telephone interview.

The stand-off with the hostage-takers, which began early on Friday, ended nearly 24 hours later when Malian troops stormed the hotel.

Souleyman claimed the group was also behind the killing of three Malian soldiers on Monday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device close to Diabozo, near Sevare.

Four other troops were wounded, the government said.

Jihadist attacks long concentrated in the north of Mali — where extremists linked to AQIM still exercise much control — began spreading to the centre of the country earlier this year, even as far south as the borders with Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso in June.

US Air Strike

The US said it targeted Belmokhtar in an air strike in the Libyan desert the same month, but AQIM denied reports its former leader had been killed.

Investigators said Monday they found phone numbers and addresses on the bodies of the “terrorists” killed in the Sevare hotel which suggested they were affiliated with the Macina Liberation Front (FLM), a new Islamic extremist group drawn from the Fulani people of central Mali.

“At this stage there is no formal proof that it was the Macina Liberation Front, but strong suspicions point to this group that has been seeking notoriety at all costs,” she said.

But a regional security source told AFP there is “much coming and going between all these groups. In claiming responsibility for the Sevare attack, Souleyman is also speaking for the other jihadi groups,” he said.

Bullet-Riddled Walls

The Byblos Hotel was in ruins after the siege with bullet-riddled walls, doors torn from their hinges and sheets and pillows stained with blood, images obtained by AFP showed.

Details of the deadly stand-off emerged on Monday with the family of one of the victims saying he had been sending them messages on WhatsApp during the shootout.

Roelof “Jaco” Janse van Rensburg, a South African rescue worker, managed to message his family from the hotel bathroom where he was hiding for hours as the drama played out, his brother-in-law told AFP.

“He was saying it (was) like a war zone out there,” Cobus Smal told AFP, saying the messages had gone on for hours until his brother-in-law’s phone battery had died during the evening.

“Everybody was hiding, they were trapped in their rooms.”

The family heard nothing until the next afternoon when they were told he was dead.

A Malian military source confirmed that foreign special forces had been involved when they stormed the hotel, without giving further details.

The Bamako government said four soldiers, five UN workers and four “terrorists” were killed. Among the victims were two Ukrainians, a Nepali, a South African and a Malian driver, according to the UN mission in Mali.

Peace Deal

The west African country has seen a surge in jihadist violence despite a peace deal signed in June.

The FLM, which emerged earlier this year, has claimed a number of attacks, some targeting security forces in central Mali.

It is considered linked to Ansar Dine — Arabic for “defenders of the faith” — one of the groups that took control of Mali’s vast arid north in April 2012.

Washington added Ansar Dine to its terror blacklist in 2013, accusing it of close ties to Al-Qaeda and of torturing and killing opponents in the north.

Mauritanian news agency Al-Akhbar, which regularly publishes jihadist statements, also said the FLM could be behind Friday’s attack in Sevare.

The town, 620 kilometres (385 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, is a key staging post on the road to Mali’s vast desert north.

A French-led offensive in 2013 routed Islamist groups from their northern strongholds, but swathes of the desert region remain lawless.

Two attacks this month in central and northern Mali left 13 soldiers dead.