Boko Haram insurgents have again attacked Kukawa town in Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State, killing many civilians, who returned to the community last week, military sources have told SaharaReporters.

The Nigerian Army had some weeks ago claimed it embarked on clearance operations within Baga and Kukawa in Northern Borno with a view to enabling a safer environment for returning residents.

SaharaReporters gathered that the insurgents also hoisted their flag in the town.

A resident of Kukawa, who spoke with our correspondent, said apart from those killed, several others were left with serious bullet injuries.

“The terrorists have again taken over Kukuwa, even with a statement by the army to our people that the town was safe some weeks ago. Why will the army have no plans to protect civilians In Kukawa and let them return home?,” the resident asked.

Boko Haram has become more ferocious in recent times even though the current administration had often said that the sect had been decimated.

The sect has killed over 15,000 people in Northern Nigeria since the insurgency began in 2009.

Jihadist group Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for a hours-long siege that occurred Sunday evening at Elite Hotel, a beachside facility located along Mogadishu’s popular Lido beach, like reported by nation.co.ke.

The death toll is feared to be close to 20 with over 30 wounded persons.

The attack on the hotel, which is owned by a Somali MP, began with a blast from a car loaded with explosive material.

The bang was followed by a group of fighters barging into the hotel, prompting an exchange of fire with the facility’s armed security personnel.

“Al-Shabaab forces waged amaliyat (the group’s term for operation) against a hotel owned by member of (Somalia’s) federal parliament,” the jihadist group announced through its broadcaster, al-Andalus.

People in the area reported that they could still hear sounds of gunfire and occasional explosions.

The owner of the hotel, MP Abdullahi Mohamed Nur, posted a message on Twitter saying that he was inside the hotel when the assault started.

“Some people died and others were wounded. I beg Allah’s clemency for the dead and prompt recovery for the inured,” he said.

Initial reports confirmed the death of the Head of Department for Regional Relations for the Ministry of Information, Mr Abdirizak Abdullahi Abdi.

Federal Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayr Mareye sent condolence messages to the family of the deceased.

The wounded include Ms Faiza Bella, a singer with Heegan band in Mogadishu.

It is believed that the attackers were four, with two of them reported killed during the three-hour long gun battle with government security officers deployed as reinforcement.

Fighters linked to Islamic State took control of a northern Mozambican port town that’s been a key logistics link for a $23 billion natural-gas project being built by Total SE, according to Risk Advisory Group and rigzone.com.

It’s the third time this year the insurgents have seized Mocimboa da Praia, located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the LNG project and the closest harbor. About three months ago, fighters that first pledged allegiance to IS in 2018 occupied it for as long as three days.

The site of Total’s project is in the preparation stage, with the company having recently finalized an initial $15 billion of financing and the town is among several access points to bring in supplies, including a port and airport at the development. The fighting, though, shows an escalation of insurgent attacks in the region that authorities are battling to contain.

“The capture of Mocimboa da Praia, as well as the previous assaults on district capitals since March, shows that the capabilities of IS militants has improved,” Tristan Gueret, an analyst at RAG in London, said by email on Wednesday.

Total didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Gas projects in the country’s northern-most Cabo Delgado province are central to plans to transform the impoverished southeast African nation. Projected revenue from the developments are estimated at more than three times its current gross domestic product.

Mocimboa is where Islamist militants started a war in 2017 that’s left more than 1,500 people dead, according to estimates from the Madison, Wisconsin-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks global violence. The conflict has displaced 220,000 people in the region.

‘Dedicated Force’

“Although it is another indication of the fast deterioration in the security environment in Cabo Delgado, the success of the attack in Mocimboa da Praia does not necessarily have major or immediate implications for LNG operations,” Gueret said. The Total project area is “currently secured by a dedicated force, and this means that mounting a successful raid there would be much more challenging for the group,” he said.

Even with the help of private military contractors flying helicopters armed with machine guns, the Mozambican government has struggled to curb the insurgency, which has grown increasingly brazen in its attacks this year.

Security forces have in the past seven days killed 59 fighters in the region and destroyed six of their camps, the government said in a statement. Fighting is continuing in order to “neutralize” the militants, it said.

The Southern African Development Community and the African Union should urgently assist Mozambique to end the insurgency and help the displaced populations, the Pretoria, South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies said in a statement Thursday. SADC leaders are set to meet on Aug. 17, when Mozambique takes over the chairmanship of the regional bloc from Tanzania.

“Military action by the Mozambique government, including the continued use of mercenaries, has not stopped the attacks and has worsened the plight of civilians,” the ISS said. “Left unchecked, the insurgency is likely to grow and spill over into neighboring countries.”

At least 10 people were killed and five others were wounded in fighting between al-Shabab and armed residents in Somalia’s central region of Mudug, witnesses and officials said according to voanews.com.

The fighting started Wednesday after heavily-armed al-Shabab militants, who control parts of the region, tried to impose taxes on the residents of Shabellow village. It’s about 20 kilometers west of the Ba’ad weyn district, a base for the 21st division of the Somali National Army.

“Heavily-armed al-Shabab members first asked us to pass through our village, but in fact we found out they wanted to seize our village and we confronted them,” the head of the village, Mohamed Ibrahim, told VOA by phone.

Ibrahim said eight of the residents and a number of al-Shabab militants were killed in the fighting.

“They [al-Shabab] killed eight civilians, including elders who could not run away, and women, and I saw the dead bodies of six of al-Shabab fighters,” Ibrahim said.

Residents said the militants briefly took control of the village and burned houses and businesses.

Al-Shabab militants have claimed responsibility of the attack, describing the village as a Somali military base, a claim denied by residents.

Yonis Mohamed Shaare, a Galmudug state lawmaker, described what happed today as the massacre of civilians.

“The militants knew there was a military base 20 kilometers from the village but instead they attacked this village, massacring innocent civilians,” Shaare said.

Earlier this year, the villagers, who already are struggling economically after losing hundreds of livestock in the country’s drought, dismissed the militants’ demand for taxes.

Villagers and pastoralists in several areas in central Somalia in the past took up arms against al-Shabab fighters, who wanted to loot their resources, including livestock.

Troops in Niger backed by French air power launched a hunt Monday for the killers of eight people, six of them French nationals, as prosecutors in Paris announced a terror investigation into their deaths, like reported by france24.com.

“Search operations with our partners are under way to root out the people behind these vile acts and strengthen security in the area,” the Nigerien interior ministry said.

The French military, which has a 5,100-member anti-jihadist force in the Sahel, said it was providing air support for the operation, which is unfolding over a vast wooded area.

Six French citizens were killed on Sunday along with their Nigerien guide and driver about six kilometres (four miles) from the town of Koure, in a wildlife haven about an hour’s drive southeast from the capital Niamey, officials said.

The country, one of the poorest in the world, is struggling with incursions by Islamists from both Nigeria to the south and Mali to the west.

In Paris, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement they would investigate charges of “murders with links to a terrorist enterprise” and “criminal terrorist association”.

French NGO Acted, whose staff were targeted in the attack, said the victims were aged between 25 and 50 and were four women and four men. It did not give their names.

Acted co-founder Frederic Roussel told reporters in Paris that the international community had to do more to ensure the protection of humanitarian workers.

“The international community must understand the contradiction between asking us to support these populations who live under the most dramatic circumstances and leaving us alone against violence where we are the easiest targets,” he said.

‘Cowardly and barbaric’

The attackers came on motorcycles through the bush and waited for the group’s arrival, a source said.

Most of the victims were shot although one woman managed to escape but was later caught and her throat was cut, the source added.

The bodies were laid side-by-side next to a torched 4×4, which had bullet holes in its rear window.

Nigerien forensic experts investigated the site of the killing before the bodies were taken to Niamey.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his Nigerien and Malian counterparts Mahamadou Issoufou and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita lashed the attack as cowardly and barbaric.

The Koure area is a sanctuary for hundreds of West African giraffes, a subspecies distinguished by its lighter colour.

“We all go to Koure on weekend outings because it’s very easy to access,” a Western humanitarian source based in Niamey told AFP.

“Everyone goes there, even ambassadors, diplomats, teachers… it is not considered a dangerous zone at all.”

Later on Monday, officials said they had suspended access to the park and extended a pre-existing state of emergency to cover the Kollo prefecture, which houses the giraffe park.

The region around Niamey has become a hideout for jihadist groups including the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), which have killed hundreds of troops and driven thousands of people from their homes.

Previous kidnappings

Nigerien authorities banned humanitarian organisations from travelling without military escort in several areas of Tillaberi and the neighbouring region of Tahoua in 2019 after armed men stole vehicles belonging to aid groups.

Two humanitarian workers, an American and a German, had been kidnapped in those regions in 2016 and 2018.

Aid groups said Monday they would not be deterred by the deteriorating security situation.

“The UNHCR, like all humanitarian actors in Niger, will continue its mission to help the most fragile populations,” said Alessandra Morelli, the representative in Niger for the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

“We try to be close to the people, we try to go out into the field to assist these populations affected by the violence, but we notify the relevant authorities of our movements,” Nicolas von Arx, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Niger, told AFP.

At least 11 people, including security forces and Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliated group al-Shabaab fighters, were killed, while several others wounded in a gun battle inside the central prison in the capital Mogadishu on Monday, officials told Anadolu Agency.

The fighting between security forces and al-Shabaab militants began after al-Shabaab inmates secretly received weapons.

Security forces killed six al-Shabaab inmates who were involved in the incident, Ismail Mukhtar Oronjo, the Somali government spokesman told Anadolu Agency over the phone.

“The fighting inside the central prison in Mogadishu this evening claimed at least 11 lives — including security forces and six al-Shabaab militants already convicted of different crimes — and wounded several other people,” Oronjo said.

The situation is currently under control and security forces eliminated all fighters involved in the incident, he noted.

Oronjo added that they did not know how al-Shabaab inmates had received the weapons, but that investigations into the matter were underway.

The Defence Headquarters has said that the reported activities of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda terrorist groups in West Africa is not new, like reported by punchng.com.

It stated that the Nigerian security forces were conscious of their operations and had been working to contain them.

The Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Maj. Gen. John Enenche, at a briefing in Abuja on Thursday, added that ISIS and Al-Qaeda infiltrated West Africa after Libya and Irag wars in apparent reference to the roles that the United States played in the conflicts.

The Commander, United States Special Operations Command Africa, Maj. Gen. Dagvin Anderson, had on Tuesday cautioned that the Islamic State and Al-Qaida terrorist groups were exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic and gradually taking over the West African region after losing ground in Syria, Iraq and in the Middle East.

Enenche said the Armed Forces was not oblivious of the potency of such infiltration, noting that “it was the Nigerian military who raised the alarm of movement of terrorists from the Middle East to West Africa and is conscious of it.”

The coordinator further noted that the movement of insurgents from Libya was equally revealed by Nigerian security services.

He noted, “Our attention being drawn to the fact that terrorists from other zones are coming here; I think it would be good for us to be keeping records of events as they unfold.

“For me, this is not the first time they are raising such an alarm; the alarm is as old as maybe five or 10 years and the armed forces and the country are conscious of it.

“Have we not captured foreigners among the people that have been terrorising us in this country?

“So, it is just like a call to keep doing what you are doing, so the general public should know that the security agencies are on top of that one.”

Mali’s army suffered new losses in twin attacks Sunday that left at least five soldiers dead as the Sahel country was mired in a political crisis sparking international concern, like reported by france24.com.

Five soldiers were killed and five were wounded in an ambush on a military convoy and an artillery attack on a camp, with both attacks blamed on jihadists, in central Mali, army and local sources said.

The bloodshed came some six weeks after jihadists ambushed a military convoy, also in central Mali, killing 24 soldiers.

Jihadists unleashed a revolt in northern Mali in 2012 that has since spread to the centre of the poor Sahel country and to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger despite the presence of thousands of French and UN troops.

The latest attacks came as President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita faces insistent calls to resign from an opposition angry over the brutal jihadist conflict as well as dire economic conditions and perceived corruption.

Much of the current tension was sparked in April, when the Constitutional Court tossed out 30 results from long-delayed parliamentary elections — a move that benefited Keita’s party.

The so-called June 5 Movement (M5-RFP) has continued to insist on Keita’s departure, despite two mediation missions by the regional bloc ECOWAS which suggested a new unity government and a resolution to the election quarrel.

M5-RFP has said it would resume acts of “civil disobedience” on Monday after observing a truce for the Eid al-Adha festival, a key Muslim holiday that began on Friday.

Boko Haram fighters reportedly killed at least 16 people during an attack on a displaced persons camp in northern Cameroon on Sunday, according to ripplesnigeria.com.

A government official in the Central African nation confirmed the attack to journalists in the capital, Yaounde.

The jihadist group has launched several attacks in Cameroon and other countries in the Lake Chad region including Chad and Niger in recent years.

There is something inescapably Beau Geste about France’s Operation Barkhane. Today, as yesterday and as tomorrow, combat patrols from the French Foreign Legion and other regiments of the French Army will set out into the sand and scrub of sub-Saharan Africa searching out jihadists attached to al-Qaeda and Isis, like reported by unherd.com.

France has now been waging war in the no man’s land of the Sahel for six long years. Barkhane began on 1 August 2014, with a mandate for counter-insurgency ops across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — an area the size of Europe. But in the Sahel, the terrorists can run and they can hide. Initially, the French deployment was 4,500 troops — with the Legion heavily committed, as always — but this year President Macron boosted the troop numbers of President Hollande to 5,100. Political Left to political Right, Barkhane is a French commitment. For now.

Ostensibly, the French work alongside the Sahel’s national armies and the peacekeepers of the United Nations’ Minumusa stabilization mission in Mali. For months Paris has been trying to build support in Europe and the West for a multinational special ops “Task Force Takuba”. Only Estonia and the Czech Republic have confirmed allocation of personnel; Britain, meanwhile, contributes a paltry three Chinook helicopters to Barkhane; Denmark two Merlin helicopters; the US declines the invitation to the party, again and again.

Barkhane is France’s show. No one else has the stomach for counter-terrorism in the dust and heat and the vastness of the Sahel, not after Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The other countries of the West barely report the operation, let alone support it. Barkhane is France’s lonely war.

The financial cost to La Belle France of Barkhane is a breath-sucking 600 million euros per annum. After all, soldiers need to be fed, equipped, and supported by Mirage 2000 jets, Tigre attack helicopters, Reaper drones, and conveyed by 380 trucks and 500 armoured vehicles. The cruel desert is endless.

So is Operation Barkhane, which has become France’s never-ending war.

The insurgency in the Sahel began in Mali in 2012, when a Tuareg separatist uprising was exploited by al-Qaeda-linked extremists who seized cities in the north. With Mali tottering on the brink of collapse France, the former colonial power, began its military intervention, driving the jihadists from the urban centres. This success turned to catastrophe, however, because the militants morphed into mobile formations operating in rural areas, where they proved as easy to kill as the wind. The insurgency spread to central and southern regions of Mali and then into Burkina Faso and Niger.

The jihadists in the Sahel come in 57 varieties, but the majority of their attacks are attributed to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (JNIM), which formed in March 2017 and has sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Since May 2019, rival Isis has given its imprimatur in the Sahel area to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a split from Boko Haram.

Whether umbilically linked to Isis or Al-Qaeda, the jihadists make the sands run with blood. More than 4,000 people were reported killed in jihadist attacks in the Sahel in 2019, and tns of thousands were displaced. The violence vortexes, year on year; recently the U.N, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the Sahel insurgency now threatens the countries of West Africa. The central states of Mali are in anarchy.

There is no ambiguity about Operation Barkhane. Paris does not dress it up as “peace-keeping” or “stabilisation”; French officials insist that Barkhane’s priority is counterterrorism and does not baulk at the targeted killing of key jihadist leaders. So far, two of the five founding leaders of JNIM have been “neutralised” (but read “assassinated”). In order to pursue these aims, the French have negotiated a perhaps unprecedented military rite of passage whereby their forces can conduct offensive operations in other sovereign nations. Under this deal UN Security Council resolutions authorise French troops to “use all necessary means.”

According to the press communiques of the Ministère des Armées, there are tactical victories over the jihadists almost every month. Certainly, the pace of operations in the tri-border zone of Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger has increased since Macron doubled down on troop commitment. In January this year, French troops were killing a militant a day in the Liptako-Gourma area of the tri-border; since Barkhane began around 700 jihadists have been captured or killed.

Sometimes, though, the blood flows the wrong way. French operations in the Sahel have led to the death of 43 French military personnel, most recently Tojohasina Razafintsalama of the 1 RHP (1st Regiment de Hussards Parachustistes), killed in Mali on 23 July. Two other “red berets” were wounded in the same suicide attack by a jihadist driving a truck load of explosives. In the obligatory communiqué from the Elysee, President Macron said he “bows with deep respect to the sacrifice of this soldier, who died in the accomplishment of his mission in the service of France”.

And so half-way down the world the French are fighting the War on Terror that the rest of the West has retreated from. There is a terrible innocence to Barkhane. The French commander of Barkhane, General Pascal Facon has declared he can “easily” defeat the Islamists. “We shouldn’t underestimate them,” he said, but “we shouldn’t give them too much importance either.”

This is agonisingly naïve. Seven hundred jihadists may have been taken out of play, but that still leaves about 6,000 terrorists in the Sahel, and they know the lie of the bad lands. The combat patrols of the French rarely do. They drive hundreds of miles from their “temporary advance bases” deep in the desert, bouncing up and down in steel armoured cars and personnel carriers, in temperatures topping 40 degrees, seeing nothing but sand and acacia trees through their wrap-around sunglasses.

For hour after hour. There is looking for a needle in a haystack; then there is looking for jihadists in thousands of square miles of the Sub-Saharan Sahel. The red dust kicked up by the convoys can be seen for miles. The jihadists get prior warning, and melt away with their AK-47s. Just recently, a French combat engineer was interviewed on television following a search for a jihadist weapons cache, ending with the inevitable reply “the search didn’t find anything today”. It has become the mantra of French officers interviewed about Barkhane — “We didn’t find anything”. They smile for the camera, but you can sense the frustration.

The jihadists find the patrols, however. The threat of ambush, in the desert and in the villages, is ever present. The jihadists may wear flip-flops but they mount viciously effective military operations, taking out the armoured personnel carriers with rockets; in January they attacked a static army base at Chinagodrar in western Niger, killing 89 soldiers and staff.

The Islamists can afford to spend lives and they can afford to spend money, being more than amply funded by crime. According to the Institute for Security Studies, these activities “mainly take the form of trafficking in weapons, drugs, motorcycles and fuel, along with cattle rustling, artisanal gold mining and poaching”.

Neither should it be supposed that the militants lack popular support. The national governments of the “Group of Five for the Sahel” — Chad, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — are blighted by corruption and incompetence, and some in the villages think “Better the Islamist devil you don’t know very well than the governmental one you definitely do.” Unsurprisingly, the Islamists also frame Operation Barkhane as Imperialism Redux, so that the French are in danger of handing the Islamists the most dangerous weapon of all, the propaganda narrative of A War of Independence.

In terms of military evolution, France is where America was in 2001 with Afghanistan. No exit strategy, no plan other than fighting war with war. Meanwhile, the armies of the “G5 Sahel”’, supposedly supportive of Barkhane, are under-trained and under-equipped. On one training exercise, the French instructor discovered that his Malian army students had no idea what a compass was.

Barkhane, and its lack of effectiveness in bringing resolution, is starting to take its toll. Anti-French demonstrations in Bamako, the Malian capital, were regular fixtures before Covid, with Macron depicted as Hitler on placards.

Still, there is something distinctly, forlornly heroic about the operation. The French have a dislike of Islamism that is visceral, reflexive. The French are also psychologically comfortable in playing soldier in the Sahel. Last year in a bar in Saint-Maixent, where the French army has its NCO training base, I asked a corporal what was the purpose of Barkhane? He replied with a one-word answer “Bataclan.” His mate nodded over his glass of 1664 lager.

The theory is that, by fighting the jihadists in the Sahel-Saharan strip (“SSS” in military jargon), they will be unable to mount terror attacks in France like that of 13 November, 2015. Maybe, but only a fool would discount from France’s war ambitions the stopping of the flow of migrants to Europe caused by Malian instability, and protection of French uranium sources in the region. The French have admirably lofty philosophies, but they understand realpolitik.

Only a fool, too, would disavow the imperial murmurs that still occur in the heart of France. Macron may come over all Monsieur Union européenne, but France has an unrequited longing for its colonial past. You only have to watch the weather report on France 2 TV to see that; after giving the meteo for The Hexagon it proceeds to give the forecast for “France d’outre-mer”, the lingering imperial outposts, as far away as New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Or indeed, watch the annual Bastille Day display of military might parading down the Champs-Elysées.

In the vastness of the Sahel France gets to play out colonial memories as neo- imperial dreams. But this is the tragedy of Barkhane, that France most ambitious military effort since Algeria is turning into a nightmare, her own personal Afghanistan.