At least 37 persons consisting men, women and children have been confirmed dead after Boko Haram terrorists attacked Gubio town in Gubio local government of Borno State, security sources and government officials have confirmed.

Yesterday, the state governor, Dr Kashim Shettima, visited Gubio, a town located 93km away from Maiduguri, the state capital, to assess the situation in the community.

Over 400 homes, including government buildings, schools (both western and Islamic), 22 vehicles and dozens of motorcycles were found burnt as the governor’s convoy arrive at Gubio.

A military base was also seen to have been overrun by the terrorists, but it could not be ascertained immediately if soldiers had suffered any casualties.

The insurgents, packed in six pickup vehicles, drove into the quiet agrarian and commercial town of Gubio at about 5:30pm when some of the residents were resting outside their homes after a hot day’s job, and children at the playground.

Witnesses said the terrorists announced their arrival by sporadic shooting with assault rifles.

‘’We were playing football around 05:30pm when we suddenly started hearing gunshots and there was confusion all over the town; everybody was running. The civilians JTF tried their best but there was no weaponry,” said Bukar Mondama, a teenage resident of Gubio and member of the town’s vigilante group, the Civilian-JTF.

“They killed 37 civilians including two little boys, while many others suffered injuries. They took their time to select and burn all good homes and all the mosques in the town. They burnt our vehicles that were parked in the town so that we would not be able to go after them,” Mondama told the state governor.

Another Civilian-JTF personnel, Yusuf Modu Gubio, said: “I exchanged gunshots with them and killed some of them but, to my surprise, they were mostly young boys; some of them were dressed in army uniforms and came in military vehicles. They were roaming the streets without anyone challenging them.”

Governor Shettima pleaded with the traumatised residents not to flee their town, assuring them that all security measures had been taken to protect them from further attacks. He also promised the people that his government would rebuild all the destroyed homes.

“I appeal to you not to flee from your homes, we assure you that we are going to rebuild the ancient town of Gubio”.

Several Kenyan police officers were killed in an attack Monday night by suspected Shabaab militants in the northeastern Garissa county, where 148 students were massacred last month, local media reported.

A police spokesman, George Kimoti, confirmed there was an attack in the Garissa region but declined to give more details.

“Please give us time to consolidate all the information,” he said.

The Daily Nation newspaper of Kenya reported that at least 20 police officers were feared dead, the victims of an ambush Monday night by al-Shabab militants in Yumbis village.

The police officers – who were on their way to rescue another team of officers wounded in an attack earlier on Monday – were moving in a convoy of four vehicles, according to the newspaper. The vehicles reportedly were burned.

The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab has carried out several attacks in Kenya in retaliation for Kenya’s military involvement in Somalia, where Kenyan troops are part of an African Union force bolstering the Western-backed central government.

Despite major setbacks in 2014, al-Shabab continues to wage a deadly insurgency against Somalia’s government and remains a threat in the East African region.

The group claimed responsibility for a deadly assault last month on a college in Garissa town.

Boko Haram militants are reported to have hacked 10 civilians to death in a raid on a village in northeastern Nigeria, AFP reported, citing a local official.

Nigeria’s armed forces killed scores of Boko Haram militants and rescued 20 women and children as part of an operation in the Sambisa forest, the group’s remaining hideout in the northeast of Africa’s most populous nation, the military said on Saturday.

In a statement, military spokesperson, Major General Chris Olukolade, said one soldier was killed in a landmine explosion during Friday’s operation and around 10 others were injured. Thousands have been killed in the Islamist group’s six-year insurgency that at its height saw the insurgents control an area the size of Belgium in Africa’s biggest oil producer.

But the group, whose name means “Western education is sinful” in the Hausa language, has been pushed from most of the territory it controlled in the past few months by Nigeria’s army with assistance, at times, from soldiers provided by neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

“Troops have forged ahead with the on-going offensive operations as scores of the terrorists died in the assault on their bases,” said Olukolade.” A total of 20 women and children were rescued,” added the military spokesperson, who said the operation was on-going.

The Sambisa forest covers a vast area in a remote part of northeast Nigeria, making it difficult to verify the claims. The military did not say if those rescued included any of the 200 schoolgirls Boko Haram abducted from the town of Chibok last year, an attack that sparked an international outcry.

Diplomats and intelligence officials said they believed at least some of the girls were being held in the forest about 100km (60 miles) from Chibok, although US reconnaissance drones failed to find them.

The Nigerian army has freed more than 700 women held by Boko Haram in recent weeks but the Chibok girls have not been among them. Boko Haram, which sometimes puts out statements and videos via the Internet, has not commented on the military’s claims.

Nigerians hope president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general who will be inaugurated on Friday, will stamp out the rebellion which his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, struggled to confront.

Fighting in south Somalia between al Shabaab militants and government forces killed at least 24 people, while a rebel attack in the capital killed three Transport Ministry workers and a lawmaker, officials and the group said on Saturday.

Al Shabaab launched an attack on government troops late on Friday in the Awdigle district and Mubarak village in the Lower Shabelle region, south of the capital Mogadishu. Clashes lasted until early Saturday and killed at least two dozen people, residents said.

In two gun attacks in the capital, the group, which wants to topple the Western-backed government, killed three people working for the Transport Ministry and in another assault shot dead a lawmaker, police and a parliamentarian said.

Al Shabaab said it was behind the attacks in the south and in Mogagishu. “We shall continue killing the enemies,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told Reuters.

The African Union’s AMISOM peacekeeping force and Somali soldiers pushed al Shabaab into smaller pockets of territory during an offensive launched last year, but the group still launches regular bomb and gun attacks.

“We did not sleep last night because they exchanged shells and gunfire throughout the night,” resident Afrah Hussein told Reuters from Awdigle district, adding he had counted 17 dead but could not say if they were soldiers or militants.

In Mubarak, a resident saw seven killed from both sides.

Al Shabaab said 25 soldiers were killed in the south. Lower Shabelle Governor Abdikadir Mohamed Sidi told Reuters at least 40 rebels died, alongside Colonel Dahir Shekaal, the commander of government forces in Awdigle.

Al Shabaab and officials often given conflicting figures.

In the attack in Mogadishu, police said the three Transport Ministry workers were killed when al Shabaab gunmen blocked their car and sprayed them with bullets.

Separately, one lawmaker was killed and another was wounded in Mogadishu when the militant group used a similar tactic.

Although diplomats say al Shabaab has been pushed mainly into areas in the Galgala hills in the north and Juba Valley in the south, the group has continued to launch strikes in the capital Mogadishu and on Somali and AMISOM forces.

Al-Shabaab militants attacked a village in the northeastern Kenyan county of Garissa, the ministry of interior said Friday.

The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab group, which has carried out frequent attacks in Kenya in recent years to try to force Nairobi to pull its troops out of Somalia, struck a university in the same area last month, killing 148 people.

A ministry statement said the militants entered Yumbis village, 70 km (45 miles) north of Garissa town, on Thursday evening.

“Security forces swiftly mobilized and engaged the militants in a gun battle. No casualties were reported,” the ministry said.

Kenya’s tourism industry, a top foreign exchange earner, has borne the brunt of the attacks, as worried tourists cancel their bookings.

Boko Haram insurgents have killed 26 residents of Inding and Ropp villages in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State.

In the Ropp attack on Wednesday afternoon, nine residents of the villages were burnt inside a room in which  they were hiding.

The local government’s Chairman, Emmanuel Loman, confirmed the attacks.

The council chief said the attackers arrived the area in hundreds and surrounded the village.

He said the assailants prevented the villagers from escaping.

Loman said: “These killings are becoming too many. We have been shouting on top of our voices but the appropriate authorities closed their eyes as if it is not human beings the attackers have been killing.

“In the last two weeks, over 60 people have been killed by gunmen in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area alone.”

One of the victims of the Ropp attack, who narrowly escaped death, Samson Dadu said: “At first, the gunmen came and rustled 38 cows from the village. Those cows were recovered the next day by the Special Task Force (STF) when the stolen cows were being transported to the local government.

“But after recovering the stolen cows from the Fulani, they mobilised and attacked Inding village where they killed seven people.

“The next day, the attackers came in hundreds and surrounded the village. They set every house ablaze. If the occupants tried to escape, they were either shot dead or hacked down with machete.

“The attackers were heavily armed. STF soldiers cannot even challenge them.”

The villagers said they had recovered 27 bodies and still searching for the others.

STF officials on Jos Crisis, code-named: Operation Safe Haven, could not be reached last night for comments on the attacks.

The mobile phone of the STF spokesman, Captain Ikedichi Iweha, was switched off when our reporter called the number.

Governor David Jang, last week, announced a dusk to dawn curfew in the local government to halt further attacks.

Five members of the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab were captured Wednesday in a joint security operation in Mogadishu, officials said.

The five, who are believed to have sneaked into the city with the intention of planning and causing terror attacks, were nabbed in hideouts in Hiliwa and Yaqshiid districts of the capital by Somalia National Army and the African Union backed force, AMISOM.

“We have been gathering intelligence about the five suspects and today the joint operation led to their capture. We sealed off the identified areas and a house-to-house search in the morning led us to the five suspects,” security ministry spokesman Mohamed Yusuf told media.

The spokesman also called on the public to be vigilant and report any suspicious persons to the authorities.

Police have intensified security in Mogadishu in the last few weeks following reports that Al-Shabaab had been planning attacks after last month’s attack at the education ministry headquarters which killed at least 20 people.

All 275 women, girls and children rescued from Boko Haram and taken to the safety of a northeast Nigerian refugee camp have been taken into military custody amid suspicions that some are aiding the Islamic extremists, a camp official and a Nigerian military intelligence officer said Wednesday.

They said soldiers on Tuesday took the group from Malkohi Camp to the airport at Yola city, where a military plane flew them to an unknown destination.

Spokesman Sani Datti of the National Emergency Management Agency, which manages the camp, said he was aware that soldiers removed the group but said he had no other information about an “entirely military affair.”

The army spokesman for 23rd Armoured Brigade in Yola could not be immediately reached for comment.

An intelligence officer told The Associated Press the move followed fears that some women were communicating at night with Boko Haram. The camp official said the suspicions were voiced during trauma counseling sessions. Both requested anonymity because the affair is sensitive.

The group – which includes 67 women and girls and the rest young children – was brought to Malkohi on May 2.

They told The Associated Press heartrending stories of their captivity and the trauma of their rescue from a Sambisa Forest camp, where Boko Haram fighters stoned several of them to death. Others were crushed accidentally by a military armored car and three women died when a land mine exploded. All the rescued children were badly malnourished.

One young woman, Binta Ibrahim, told how at 16 she rescued three children aged between 2 and 4, cared for them during a year of captivity under Boko Haram and brought them to the safety of the refugee camp.

Ibrahim’s humanity so moved U.S. U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power that she called her an inspiration at the commencement address for the University of Pennsylvania this week.

“Binta is a Muslim. The three kids she saved are Christian. Tell me a more powerful rejection of Boko Haram’s perversion of Islam than Binta’s love for those kids,” she said.