Mali´s armed forces say five soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when their convoy was bombed near the border with Mauritania.

Four vehicles were also destroyed in the attack by extremists Monday in Alatona, according to a statement.

Col. Maj. Diarran Kone said an investigation has been opened into who staged the attack.

Islamic extremists took over Mali´s north in 2012. France, Mali’s former colonial ruler, led a 2013 military operation that ousted them from their urban strongholds. Since then, however, the extremists roam through the open, desert areas of northern Mali.

Mali’s military has failed to stem the violence despite support from the French and a United Nations peacekeeping mission.

The extremist groups have pushed south into Mali’s more populated areas and into neighboring Burkina Faso, staging deadly attacks.

The Somali Special Forces killed 20 al Shabaab militants in the country’s southern region of Lower Shebelle on Tuesday, a military officer said according to theeastafrican.co.ke.

Ismail Abdi Malik, commander of the 16th Unit of Somali Special Forces, told journalists that “our forces have taken control of many villages during the operation, such as Mordinle, Bula Maskin, Faqayle, Bula Bashir and we inflicted heavy casualties on the militants, killing 20 of them during the offensive.”

He added that the army will maintain operations until it drives the militants out of the whole region. Residents said there was an intense confrontation between the army and the militants.

Nigeria remains the third most impacted country in the world by terrorism – a position it has retained since 2015, the 2019 Global Terrorism Index (GTI) shows accordinf to guardian.ng.

Only Iraq and Afghanistan are ranked worse than Africa’s most populous country, which has been dealing with violent insurgency in its northeastern region since 2009. The report was published by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace.

Other countries in the top 10 rank are Syria, Pakistan, Somalia and India. Yemen, Philippines and the Democratic Republic complete the list.

These ten countries accounted for 87% of deaths from terrorism in 2018. Nigeria accounted for 13%.

Sub-Saharan Africa recorded the second-highest number of deaths from terrorism after South Asia, overtaking the Middle East and North Africa, which is now ranked third.

Although the number of global terrorism-related deaths declined for the fourth consecutive year, Nigeria and Afghanistan witnessed an upsurge.

The surge in Nigeria counters the government’s claims that it has reined in the reign of terror in different parts of the country.

GTI says 2, 040 died in 2018 due to terrorism. The figure rose by 508, representing a 33% increase on the figures for 2017, which stood at 1, 532.

“The increase in deaths was the result of the intensification of the conflict between pastoralists and the nomadic Fulani people, with deaths attributed to extremist Fulani elements increasing by 261 per cent in a single year,” the GTI report said.

The uptick in the Nigerian terrorism death pushed up the number in Sub-Saharan Africa, making the region second most terrorised region in the world.

In spite of the spike, 2014 remains the darkest year for Nigeria when it was ranked second most terrorised country in the world. At that time, Boko Haram fighters unleashed the violent reign on the northeast and occupied a large swathe of land, which it called its caliphate.

The inability of the Goodluck Jonathan administration to substantially deal with the insurgents was one of the reasons the People’s Democratic Party lost out the centre.

President Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general, who promised to halt the spread of Boko Haram insurgency was voted into power in 2015 even though he was an opposition candidate then.

While Buhari has overseen a measure of success in the fight against Boko Haram and its splinter group loyal to the Islamic State – Islamic State in West African Province – insurgents are still capable carrying of fatal attacks on military and civilian targets.

In the first eight months of 2019 alone, at least, 615 military officials were killed by Boko Haram, 2019 GTI shows.

However, the report indicates that deaths caused by Boko Haram dropped 42% in 2018 compared to the previous year, “an 89 % decline from their peak in 2014.”

Moreover, the fatality rate of Boko Haram attacks has fallen from 15 deaths per attack to four in the past five years. This is consistent with the Nigerian government’s claims of having substantially degraded the insurgents.

“The position of the Nigerian government is that the Boko Haram terrorism has been degraded and defeated. The real Boko Haram we know is defeated,” the Nigerian government said in a statement on July 30.

It, however, said the country was facing “a mixture” of Boko Haram remnants, criminal gangs and fighters from the terror groups in the Maghreb and other West African countries.

While Boko Haram was less fatal in 2018, GTI says “Fulani extremists” were rampant in their violence and “were responsible for the majority of terror-related deaths” in Nigeria.

The group, GTI shows, carried out 297 attacks and was responsible for at, least, 1,158 deaths. Over 200 of those attacks were described as “armed assaults,” and mostly targeted at civilians.

Mali´s military says 24 soldiers have died in the latest extremist attack as alarm grows about the vast Sahel region being used as a haven for fighters linked to the Islamic State group and al-Qaida, like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

Monday´s attack occurred amid a surge in assaults that have killed over 100 Malian troops in recent weeks and led to public outrage, political pressure on President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and a decline in military morale.

In a statement overnight, Mali´s army said 29 soldiers were wounded and 17 extremists killed at Tabankort in the northeastern Gao region.

The attack occurred while soldiers from Mali and Niger were carrying out a joint operation along their border to track extremists. Nigerien troops detained about 100 suspects, the statement said.

It did not say which extremist group was to blame.

The State Department´s annual report on extremism, released this month, said the arid Sahel region stretching across Africa south of the Sahara Desert is of growing concern with thousands of IS-linked fighters carrying out deadly attacks in Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and other countries.

The Sahel is the preferred area of focus for the global coalition fighting IS outside its core area in the Middle East “and with good reason,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week.

“ISIS is outpacing the ability of regional governments and international partners to address that threat,” he said.

A five-nation regional counterterror force, France´s largest overseas military mission and a United Nations peacekeeping mission are trying to contain the extremist threat in Mali and other countries including Burkina Faso, where roughly half a million people have been displaced this year alone.

“I call it a cancer, a cancer that started in Mali and now is infecting the region,” the top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, said last week.

But the 5,000-strong West African regional force, the G5 Sahel, has struggled to secure enough funding.

Nearly two years after 414 million euros ($458 million) was raised for the force at a European Union-hosted conference, only 18 million euros have arrived in the region, African Union commissioner for peace and stability Smail Chergui said last week.

Earlier this month U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres repeated his call for “predictable and sustained funding to the force” by the U.N. Security Council, which the United States and others have so far blocked.

The U.S. has said the Trump administration believes bilateral aid is the best approach.

Three Kenyans and two Somalis linked to the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Garissa County carried out the January attack claimed by Al-Shabaab on the DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi, according to United Nations experts, like reported by theeastafrican.co.ke.

A fourth Kenyan citizen based in Mandera County served as “a key financing link between al-Shabaab in Somalia and the attacking cell in Kenya,” adds a report by the UN experts released on November 12.

The findings lend some substance to Shabaab’s claim in June that it has recruited “an army of fighters from the Kenyan population itself.”

The Dusit attack also highlights what the UN experts describe as “a newly observed dimension of al-Shabaab’s recruitment strategy.”

“The possession of criminal skills, including knowledge of evading law enforcement, are privileged over ideology or affiliation with certain mosques or religious networks,” report says.

Ali Salim Gichunge, born in Isiolo in 1995, is named as the organiser and coordinator of the Dusit attack which left 26 people dead, including a suicide bomber and four gunmen.

Five Russian mercenaries are believed to have been killed alongside 20 Mozambique servicemen in an ambush in the southeastern African nation, the independent Carta de Moçambique news outlet reported Tuesday.

The unconfirmed report comes a month after the reported arrival of 200 Russian mercenaries and three helicopters to help Mozambique’s government forces fight jihadists amid Moscow’s wider push for influence on the continent, according to The Moscow Times.

The Kremlin denied that it had deployed any government troops in Mozambique. “Five Russian members of the Wagner Group, which is helping the Mozambican government tackle violence in that area of the country, are … reported to have died,” Carta de Moçambique cited unnamed sources as saying.

Wagner is a private military contractor with reported ties to businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. Known as “Putin’s chef,” Prigozhin is widely reported to be spearheading Russia’s push to exchange security and electioneering services for mining rights in Africa. The alleged Sunday afternoon ambush in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado also killed 20 members of the country’s defense armed forces, Carta de Moçambique reported.

African terrorism expert Jasmine Opperman added, citing emerging reports, that up to three army vehicles were burned in the attack. The Moscow Times was unable to independently confirm the reports. Neither Russia’s defense ministry nor Prigozhin’s company Concord have commented on the news at the time of publication. Mozambique’s ties to Russia date back to the 1960s, when the Soviet regime supported its Marxist-inspired party against Portugal’s colonial rule.

Under a bilateral agreement signed in 2018, Moscow agreed to send military advisers to Mozambique. As reported earlier, a CNN reporter said she was targeted by a Russian propaganda campaign following her exclusive report on the country’s activity in Africa and PMC Wagner. Previous reporting has established that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s companies have come to dominate Russian defense ministry contracting work and Prigozhin himself was sanctioned for his involvement in funding the Internet Research Agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election in the United States. He has denied involvement with Wagner. Three Russian journalists were murdered in the Central African Republic a year ago while they were working on a story about Russian mercenaries.

More than seven million people currently need humanitarian assistance in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States, as a direct result of the Boko Haram attacks, United Nations Undersecretary-General, Mark Lowcock, has said according to thisdaylive.com.

According to Lowcock, who coordinates UN’s Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, this year alone, another 140,000 persons had been displaced by the resurgence of Boko Haram attacks in Borno State.

Lowcock, who was in Nigeria last week on an official visit that took him to Maiduguri, the base of Boko Haram insurgency, from where he carried out an assessment of the situation in the Northeast, issued a statement through the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA)

In the statement, Lowcock appreciated the efforts made by Nigeria and other bodies between 2016 and 2018 to regain control of areas previously ravaged by the insurgents, which assisted more than two million displaced people to return to their homes.
“But renewed violence, most of it perpetrated by Boko Haram insurgents, has sparked an upsurge in forced displacement in Borno, with more than 140,000 people forced to move this year alone,” he said.

He said many farmers had missed multiple planting seasons and more than three million people were food insecure.
Lowcock said he had over the past year watched with growing concern, the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Borno.
He said a ten-year conflict and violence committed by Boko Haram and other non-state armed groups had destroyed communities in Borno.

“In my visits to Borno on September 2017 and October 2018, I met many of the ordinary people, who have been the victims of this crisis.”

The UN official acknowledged that though “military and security measures against the insurgents were a crucial and valid part of the response led by the Nigerian authorities, such action needs to be proportionate and avert amplifying the hardship of civilians, huge numbers of whom have suffered terribly as a result of the actions of the terrorists and insurgents.”
He, therefore, noted that military action alone would not solve the problem.

“It is therefore extremely important that the Nigerian Government, including through institutions like the Northeast Development Commission, is also implementing wider measures to address the root causes of the crisis, relieve humanitarian suffering, and promote stabilisation, recovery, and development. I strongly support these measures.”

He said he had reviewed the situation with senior officials in the Nigerian government, as well as the military and other authorities in Borno and NGOs.

“With everyone I have met, I have agreed that NGOs – through their rich networks and capacity to reach people, and their expertise and experience in operating at the community level – have a very important role to play,” he added.

Lowcock called on humanitarian organisations working in Nigeria with funding from the international community to operate in full compliance with international standards, including counter-terrorism related conditions, national laws, and humanitarian principles.

He added that maintaining such standards was not only perfunctory but practical prerequisite for funding from the major donors.

“And it is important to recognise that all the international NGOs working in the North-east are authorised to do so through the government registration process and local approvals from the relevant authorities,” he added.

France’s Operation Serval in 2013 – intended to oust al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)-allied jihadist groups from northern Mali — temporarily stabilized the region. However, by 2015 the jihadists in northern Mali began rebranding, including the AQIM-allied group Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), like reported by soufangroup.com.

Two prominent MUJWA commanders, the Mauritanian Hamadou Kheiry and Western Saharan, Abu Adnan Walid al-Sahrawi, changed their allegiance, respectively, to the so-called Islamic State. Although Kheiry was killed in U.S. airstrikes in Libya in 2017, al-Sahrawi went on to form the Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS). Al-Sahrawi’s ISGS fighters most infamously killed four U.S. special forces members in a 2017 ambush in rural Niger and have primarily ambushed troops from Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso in their tri-country border region. In 2013, Hamadou Kufa, a MUJWA sub-commander and Salafi cleric, formed the Macina Liberation Front (eventually known as Katiba Macina), which conducted operations throughout Mali.

Katiba Macina outflanked forces backed by France through integrating with local Fulani communities aggrieved by ethnic tensions and land disputes. Nevertheless, it still retained the capability for high-impact bombings with support from its experienced ‘parent group,’ AQIM. Its fighters, for example, have targeted hotels frequented by Westerners in Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali-based United Nations Facilities. Katiba Macina now comprises part of a coalition of Mali-focused jihadist groups allied with AQIM and known as Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), which announced its formation in 2017.

JNIM therefore receives tactical and strategic guidance from AQIM and through AQIM maintains links to al-Qaeda leadership. JNIM is also important to AQIM due to the latter’s inactivity in Algeria in recent years. Virtually no attacks were attributed to AQIM in Algeria in 2018 or 2019, including during the anti-government protests this year. AQIM nevertheless maintains relevance through JNIM’s high-impact Sahel-based operations.Another key component of JNIM has been Ansar al-Din, a Tuareg-led group whose leader, Iyad ag Ghaly, is a former Malian diplomat.

In addition to Iyad ag Ghaly and Kufa, there have also been Berbers and Arabs counted among JNIM’s top leadership. JNIM therefore prides itself on being a cosmopolitan jihadist coalition that can, at least in theory, unite the various tribes of the Sahel to wage jihad against the region’s governments and their primary backer, France. Despite JNIM’s constant attacks, it is challenged by Mali, neighboring countries’ armies, French and United Nations forces, but also by various local vigilante and self-protection groups and ethnically-based militant groups.

This means that while JNIM is able to undermine regional stability through its attacks, it is not powerful enough to control territory in the near future like the jihadists did when Mali’s government collapsed in 2012. In this way, JNIM differs from Nigeria- and Lake Chad-based Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), which in contrast to JNIM, does actually control territories in far northeastern Nigeria.It remains to be seen whether Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliates and franchises in West Africa will ever cooperate.

Nevertheless, there are indications that JNIM and ISGS have at times coordinated and deconflicted, at least to avoid escalation. ISWAP also has certain commanders that are amenable to cooperation with JNIM and al-Qaeda generally, but the operational areas in Mali and far northeastern Nigeria are too distant for serious cooperation to occur. Nevertheless, if regional insecurity continues to grow, especially in Niger, the possibilities for cooperation between ISGS and ISWAP and certain ISWAP factions and JNIM will likely increase. In the near-term, it seems likely that JNIM will remain the dominant jihadist force in Mali and the Sahel, while ISWAP will remain the dominant jihadist force in Nigeria and the greater Lake Chad region.

Cyber attacks and use of drones in the war in Libya constitute a threat to Nigeria because if Boko Haram and bandits get access to them they will use them. Evolving drone technology in Libya will enable bandits and Boko Haram to make low-cost but highly credible threats against Nigeria and groups that do not possess drones. It is the widespread availability of war drones in Libya that poses the largest threat to Nigeria and, indeed, West Africa as a whole, like reported by vanguardngr.com.

Almost all the armed groups in Libya use war drones. Foreign intervention has brought drones and cyber-attacks in Libya. Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones have carried out several air strikes on behalf of the Government of National Accord, GNA and provided air support for its ground forces conducting counter-offensives, most notably helping them rout Haftar’s Libyan National Army, LNA, in the city of Gharyan in late June, which hitherto had served as a major logistical hub for the siege. The LNA also has a fleet of Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones supplied by its main patron, the United Arab Emirates, UAE. They have attempted to destroy the GNA’s Bayraktar fleet, taking out a couple in air strikes against GNA bases.

The GNA’s drones are based in Tripoli’s Mitiga International Airport and Misrata in northwestern Libya. The LNA carries out most of its air strikes from al-Jufra airbase in central Libya. “The GNA received 12 Bayraktar TB2s in two batches – four and eight – between May and July,” said Arnaud Delalande, a freelance defence and security expert.

Turkey is a main ally of Libya’s “recognised” government, the GNA, led by Fayez al-Sarraj. Turkey’s president has met with Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, following heightened tensions between Turkey and forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, head of the LNA, a rival Libyan authority. Turkey provided drones to the GNA and sent on May 18, 2019, a large shipment of military equipment to pro-GNA militias controlling Tripoli and fighting the LNA. The Turkish military assistance came amid the GNA’s efforts to stop the LNA attack on the capital, Tripoli.

Drones are now used to hack servers, spy on networks, extract data, and block communications in Libya. Corporate networks in Libya are heavily affected by the malicious use of drones; so companies need to have solid security measures in place to prevent unwanted access and protect themselves from cyber warfare attacks. With the emergence of drones in the battlefield and cyber threat landscape in Libya, what are the counter measures? How do we defend against the use of drones against Nigeria? Each of these factors in Libya – drones and cyber-attacks, have been used to varying degrees individually in Libya over the past two years. Drones in particular are evolving rapidly into a versatile threat to even highly advanced militaries. Libya’s current conflict is emerging as a very different one to what has been fought before in the country, or the world.

Fleets of long-range drones carry out strikes; cyber-attacks proclaim the end of governments. The war has devolved into a bloody stalemate, with many fighters dead and thousands wounded in grinding urban conflict. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces, LAAF, a militia coalition based in the east of the country, has been on a mission to seize Tripoli since April. The capital is held by the internationally recognised GNA, supported by militias from across western Libya. But while it is Libyans who are fighting and dying, foreign actors have largely been driving this war. Turkey and Qatar support the GNA, while the United Arab Emirates, UAE; Egypt, Russia and France are behind the LAAF. These foreign backers have contributed diplomatic support, military equipment, mercenaries and military personnel, and direct military action to the two sides.

The use of drones and cyber-attacks among other dynamics in Libya’s conflict, probably portend what armed conflict in this century will look like – both within and between states. In six months, drones have become a mainstay of Libya’s conflict. While they have been fielded by Libyan militias before, including by the LAAF in the battle for the eastern city of Derna, it was not until the present conflict that their use became systematic and militarily important. According to Ghassan Salamé, the United Nations Special Representative for Libya, the current conflict has seen some 900 missions flown by drones fielded by the two sides, and this has increased steeply in recent weeks. Both sides use them for surveillance, long-range strategic strikes on arms depots and airports, and close-air support to units enmeshed in urban combat.

The GNA and LAAF rely on foreign actors for their drones. Since May, Turkey has supplied the GNA with more than a dozen Bayraktar TB2 craft, as well as ground control units. The UAE has provided the LAAF with the Chinese Wing Loong II drones. Both Turkey and the UAE are rumoured to have deployed personnel to Libya to operate the drones. Armed drones are ubiquitous in Libya, and will be on future battlefields, both due to the relatively high-precision attacks they can undertake and because they are far cheaper than traditional attack aircraft. A Wing Loong II costs US$1-2 million, and even the pricier Bayraktar is just less than US$6 million.

It sounds a little bit sci-fi, but make no mistake: The next front in cyberwar is literally above your head. Military technology companies from around the world are rushing to design, build and sell drones that hack and track, while others want to own the business of hacking of the drones themselves Libya and, indeed, West Africa are in new era of advanced cyber-electronic drones and how they will behave in this new cyber threat landscape. Drones are currently seen in the military and in the hobbyist warehouses in Libya; however, much like how the early internet was known as the ARPANET military (a project that was open to and adopted by society).

Who will adopt drones to prey on our communities, organisations and country? Libya digital networks are under constant attacks from hackers, crime-rings, terrorists, and nation state-backed hacker groups. It is important that Nigeria urgently take the time to research the capabilities of advanced cyber-electronic threats in order to prevent the new wave of advanced future attacks and learn how Nigerians can integrate what we find into our current military defences. How hackers steal data with drones In Libya attackers can attach a small computer (such as Raspberry Pi) to a drone, fly it over places where they wouldn’t normally be able or allowed to enter, and then exploit Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or RFID (Radio-frequency identification) vulnerabilities.

A cybersecurity company in Libya has proved that a drone could basically be connected to any device like smartphone or laptop. They used a drone to intercept data from the attendees’ phones with a software dubbed Snoopy that run on the minicomputer attached to the drone. It could mimic Wi-Fi networks that victims were connected to in the past and then they are able to steal any information that used on the device, including bank details and passwords. Also, other sources have shown that in Libya drones equipped with a radio transceiver could be used to hijack Bluetooth mice. This means that any other Bluetooth-connected device could be accessed, such as keyboard, from which attackers could obtain keystrokes and figure out users’ login credentials.

Seven people were wounded after a mortar attack by al-Shabab militants hit the area around Mogadishu airport, Somali witnesses and officials say according to voanews.com.

The mortars landed on the heavily-guarded Halane area of the airport that houses the African Union and United Nations Mission in Somalia.

Witnesses told VOA Somali that six mortars were fired at the vicinity just after 1pm local time.

The al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Somalia, James Swan, confirmed that the mortars landed inside the U.N. and AMISOM facilities.

“I am appalled by this blatant act of terrorism against our personnel, who work together with the Somali people on humanitarian, peace building, and development issues,” Swan said in a statement. “There is no justification for such despicable acts of violence, and the United Nations remains determined to support Somalia on its path to peace, stability and development.”

Al-Shabab uses mobile vehicles that transport mortars from one location to another. The mortars are then dissembled immediately after being fired and hidden in the bush or in a car, according to security sources.

Al-Shabab attacked the same facility with mortars earlier this year injuring two United Nations staff members and a contractor.

The attack on Sunday comes a day before Somalia marks the deadliest terrorist attack in Somalia and in Africa.

October 14 is the second anniversary of the truck bomb in Mogadishu that killed 587 people and injured hundreds of others.