The Nigerian Army Troops of 242 Battalion in conjunction with elements of Sector 2 Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) and Chadian Defence Forces (CDF) have overran Boko Haram terrorists and killed 15 of them in Borno, like reported by guardian.ng.

The Nigerian Army Operations Media Coordinator, Col. Aminu Iliyasu, disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Abuja.

Iliyasu said that the troops encountered the terrorists in an ambush at Jigalta Village on Thursday around Marari, 27 Kilometers from Monguno in Borno while on a joint clearance operation.

He said that the criminals laid an ambush with five gun trucks and unconfirmed number of insurgents.

According to him, 15 of the Boko Haram insurgents were neutralised while few of them escaped with gunshot wounds.

“In addition, two gun trucks were destroyed while another two were captured.

“Also, four Dutshka anti-aircraft guns, 9 AK 47 Rifles and a sizeable cache of ammunition were captured by the gallant troops.

“Unfortunately, one soldier paid the supreme sacrifice during the cross fire that ensued while a Chadian soldier was also wounded in action,” he said.

Iliyasu said that the Commander of Sector 3 Operation LAFIYA DOLE/MNJTF, Maj.-Gen. Abdulmalik Biu, in company of other sector commanders visited the troops at the location of the encounter.

According to him, Biu commended the efforts of the troops and conveyed the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai’s appreciation and commendation as well as the Force Commander MNJTF Maj.-Gen. Chikezie Ude’s words of encouragement to the troops.

“Additionally, the Commander Sector 2 MNJTF (CDF) Col. Bokhit Ali, expressed his satisfaction with the collaborative effort and renewed his commitment to fighting the menace of the ISWAP/Boko Haram criminals’ insurgency together,” he said.

Nigeria’s Premium Times reported attack on a military convoy by Boko Haram terrorists in which 11 soldiers were killed and 14 others wounded.

This brought total Nigerian military casualties for the week to 38 dead and 16 injured, plus six civilians killed and 16 kidnapped.

The Premium Times saluted the troops for their “patriotic battle to drive out insurgents from the country’s borders,” but heavily implied the Nigerian government is keeping information about such attacks hidden for as long as possible because the effort against Boko Haram is not going well. According to the report:

The terror group has been largely successful in its rapid attacks on Nigerian troops, with soldiers being lost at a high rate in many firefights. Hundreds of soldiers have been killed since July 2018, and the military lost more than 100 men in a single attack in November that year.

The apparent helplessness of the military leadership to forestall the wanton loss of personnel to insurgents serves as an indication of the precarious state of the war, said security analyst Olumide Adesanya.

“What we have seen over the past year and now come to accept is that Boko Haram is getting stronger and the army has been responding to the situation from one lousy strategy to another,” Mr Adesanya said. “Military casualties should not be a daily affair if we have a good strategy against Boko Haram.”

Another setback occurred in late September when insurgents attacked a military unit securing a portion of restless Borno State and killed 18 troops. Military officials announced that 22 soldiers from the unit deserted after the attack and became the subjects of a manhunt, with little subsequent word about any of them being captured.

Olumide Adesanya, the analyst who spoke to the Premium Times, grimly noted Boko Haram has curtailed its efforts to randomly bomb civilians because it began having success at attacking military patrols and encampments, with very few insurgent casualties reported during its operations.

Another weekend article at the Premium Times rattled off a string of Boko Haram attacks and kidnappings from the previous week, including the abduction of six young girls and two teachers from a secondary school. Boko Haram has an infamous predilection for abducting schoolgirls and forcing them to “marry” its fighters.

The site of an infamous Boko Haram kidnapping spree from February 2018, the Government Girls Science Technical College Dapchi of Yobe State, was reportedly closed on Monday due to fears of another raid by the militants. Students were told to remain at home until their safety could be assured.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari nevertheless insisted his government’s strategy for combating Boko Haram is “yielding positive results,” during a speech to military cadets on Saturday.

Buhari was warned by international aid agencies on Saturday that he risks causing a humanitarian disaster by threatening to expel aid groups from northeastern Nigeria. Buhari’s government claims the aid groups have been covertly funneling money to Boko Haram. The agencies say their personnel have occasionally been robbed by the militants, who executed a captive aid worker last week.

Two soldiers were killed and five others wounded in a “terrorist” attack in southwest Niger, a region that until recently had been spared insurgent raids, the interior ministry said, according to thedefensepost.com.

“A detachment of the security and defense forces [FDS] clashed Sunday with heavily armed terrorists in a valley near Dogon Kiria,” the ministry statement said.

“Following intense combat the enemy was pushed back,” it said, leaving two soldiers dead and five wounded, while the “enemy” casualties were not yet known.

It was the second such attack in the Dogondoutchi department of Dosso region which until recently had been spared raids by armed groups. In February, two gendarmes and a civilian were killed in an attack by armed men at Bagaji, a village in the region.

One of the world’s poorest countries, Niger lies in the heart of the fragile Sahel region.

Niger faces insurgency on two fronts: the southeastern Diffa region near Lake Chad is increasingly frequently hit by Islamic State West Africa Province fighters whose insurgency began in Nigeria, while militants based in Mali, including al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters, are active in the west of the country and the wider Sahel.

Attacks carried out by ISIS-affiliated militants in the Sahel have previously been attributed to Islamic State in the Greater Sahara but since May, Islamic State has attributed insurgent activities in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger tri-border area to ISWAP, rather than ISGS.

Dogondoutchi department borders Nigeria but is more than 800 km (500 miles) west of Diffa, and around 400 km east of the tri-border area.

Nigerian air force carried out strikes on a hideout belonging to the Boko Haram militants, killing scores of them in the country’s restive northeast Borno state, an official said according to spa.gov.sa.

The strikes hit Boko Haram fighters at Kirta Wulgo on the fringes of Lake Chad in the state, said Ibikunle Daramola, spokesperson for the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), in a statement sent to media.

Daramola said the operation was executed by the Air Task Force (ATF) of Operation LAFIYA DOLE.
The air strike was conducted by the ATF after persistent Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions revealed that the settlement was being used as a staging area from where the terrorists launch attacks.

One peacekeeper was killed and five others were wounded Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded in strife-torn northeastern Mali, the UN mission MINUSMA said according to hindustantimes.com.

The peacekeepers were carrying out a security patrol near the town of Aguelhok when the device detonated, spokesman Olivier Salgado said on Facebook.

In January, 11 Chadian members of MINUSMA were killed in an attack by jihadists in Aguelhok.

That attack was claimed by the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), which has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The head of MINUSMA, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, “strongly condemned the recent increase in these kinds of attacks, especially in the centre” of the country, the UN mission said.

MINUSMA has lost more than 200 peacekeepers since it was set up in 2013, according to its website.

Salgado said unidentified gunmen on Sunday targeted UN peacekeepers near the central town of Bandiagara in a separate attack, with no casualties.

Northern Mali fell into the hands of jihadists in 2012 before the militants were forced out by a French-led military intervention.

But much of the region remains chronically unstable and jihadist-led violence has spread to the centre of the country, often sparking bloodshed between ethnic groups.

Cameras picked up the two white trucks carrying bombs and fighters through the bush towards Somalia’s most secure military base, home to U.S. special forces, foreign trainers and the Somali special forces they mentor, like reported by reuters.com.

The alarm was raised. By the time the al Shabaab insurgents were a few hundred yards from the perimeter of Baledogle military airfield on Monday, Danaab – Somalia’s elite commandos – were waiting, their trainers beside them.

One truck bomb detonated far from the perimeter fence. Eight attackers in uniforms jumped from the other, but Danaab soldiers gunned them down almost immediately, said a Somali security official.

Then the second truck was hit by a U.S. air strike. The explosion was captured on video footage provided to Reuters by two security experts.

Al Shabaab, an Islamist militant group, has launched a string of complex attacks in the past two months on Somali security forces, African Union peacekeepers and – on Monday – European Union and U.S. forces.

But local and international security officials dismissed Monday’s attack on Baledogle – which followed a separate bomb attack on an Italian military convoy – as a high-profile stunt rather than a serious assault.

“This is a publicity stunt,” said the Somali security official who provided details of the attack on condition of anonymity. “Baledogle military airfield is very highly defended. It’s not easy (to attack). You can always try, but you will not succeed.”

The attacks are unlikely to influence the commitment to training Somalia forces or a review of the U.S. military presence in Africa as it focuses attention on China and Russia, a U.S. defence official said.

There are usually between 6,000 and 7,000 U.S. troops in Africa, with about 6,500 there currently, the official said. Potential troop reductions do not include Somalia, now home to between 650 and 800 U.S. troops. The review is expected to be completed this month and will then go to the secretary of defence and chairman of the joint chiefs.

Despite persistent attacks, Somalia’s international partners are more concerned with rising political tensions between the federal government and member states and reducing corruption among the Somali troops they are training to take over security responsibility from an African Union peacekeeping force.

Partners have struggled to cut graft in the Somali army by building a payroll system based on biometric data. In December 2017, the U.S. government suspended aid including food, fuel and stipends for around 18 months to units not directly supervised until accountability was strengthened.

ATTACK RAPIDLY OVER
The attacks came as Somali soldiers and African Union forces have been taking over villages in the Lower Shabelle region around the capital, Mogadishu. Some have been under insurgent control for 10 years, a security expert told Reuters. In response, al Shabaab is launching attacks on bases from the countryside.

Three Somalia-based security experts described Monday’s attack as more of a bid to grab headlines than a concerted attack on Baledogle.

Ten fighters was far too few to attempt a serious assault on the heavily defended military base, said the Somali security source. The base is home to U.S. special forces, Somalia’s Danaab and Washington D.C.-based Bancroft Global, which has a U.S. government contract to train Danaab. The Somali National News agency said the attack was over in 10 minutes.

“I don’t think even they thought they would succeed,” the Somali official said. “But there are a lot of military gains happening in Lower Shabelle and across the country… This is a way to show ‘we are still here; we are still alive,’ to get attention.”

Photos provided to Reuters by two other Somalia-based security experts show a number of men dressed in camouflage uniforms sprawled in the dust or piled in the back of a pickup truck, their injuries consistent with gunshot wounds.

A pile of weapons recovered from the attackers included grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, light machine guns, Kalashnikov-style rifles and belt loads of ammunition. The attackers had also packed food supplies, including milk and apples.

After the attack, al Shabaab put out a statement saying they had killed 100 foreign soldiers and destroyed five aircraft, including drones and helicopters. They provided no evidence to support their claims.

SECURITY WORRIES
As al Shabaab attacks continue, Somalia’s internal politics also are causing concern. There is deepening suspicion between states and the presidency, a long-running spat partly grounded in rivalries for access to international security funds and worsened by the federal government’s perceived interference in regional elections.

In December, the government imprisoned Muktar Robow, a popular former al Shabaab commander who had defected and ran for the leadership in South West state. The arrest sparked protests, and when the United Nations protested over the use of deadly force to quell the demonstrations, Somalia expelled its envoy.

In August, Ahmed Madobe, leader of the southern Jubbaland region, was re-elected despite federal opposition. Neighbouring Kenya, involved in a spat over oil rights with Somalia, supported Madobe.

The bad blood between the government and regions means local security forces do not share intelligence with federal forces, one regional intelligence official told Reuters.

Local forces are often better-equipped than federal soldiers posted to the regions and often more successful at fighting al Shabaab in their home area, although the Danaab units – better- paid and better-trained than regular soldiers – are the elite.

Insurgents conducted attacks against two military posts in the Mopti region of Mali near the border with Burkina Faso, killing at least two civilians and burning 22 vehicles, the army and local officials said according to thedefensepost.com.

Two military posts were attacked early Monday, September 30, the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) tweeted. A post at Mondoro was attacked around at 1 a.m, followed by an assault on a post at Boulkessi – also spelled Boulkessy – at 4:30 a.m., FAMa said. Boulkessi is around 70 km (40 miles) east of Mondoro.

Minister of Communication Yaya Sangare later said in a statement that a FAMa camp at Boulkessi and a military post at Mondoro had been the “subject of a violent jihadist attack.”

No precise casualty toll was available, Sangare said, but the government deplored the “heavy loss of equipment and significant damage.”

“A large-scale air operation was carried out in the area, to neutralize the attackers and regain effective control of our positions,” Sangare added.

“Armed jihadists came at night to Mondoro. They went to the command post of the camp … and fired. The army withdrew. The jihadists’ fire killed two civilians and wounded three,” a local official said.

“The assailants made off with two vans filled with ammunition, two camels and 12 cows,” the official added.

The regional G5 Sahel Joint Force said in a statement that a position at Boulkessi manned by personnel from a Malian battalion attached to the force was attacked by presumed members of Ansar ul Islam.

They came on “several vehicles loaded with heavy arms and on motorbikes,” the statement said, without giving any casualty figures.

A military source told AFP the attackers burnt 22 vehicles, nearly half of the automatic weapons in the camp and a large cache of ammunition.

On March 1, nine Malian soldiers attached to the G5 Sahel Joint Force were killed in Boulkessi when a vehicle in which they were traveling was struck by a roadside bomb.

A 2018 investigation by the U.N. mission in Mali concluded that Malian soldiers attached to the G5 Sahel Joint Force executed 12 civilians at a market in Boulkessi in May 2018.

Many armed groups are active in Mali and the wider Sahel region, including Ansar ul Islam, which emerged near the Burkina Faso-Mali border in December 2016. Most insurgent attacks are attributed to the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM) which formed in March 2017 from a merger of several smaller groups including the Sahara branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and Al-Mourabitoun. JNIM’s leadership has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Islamic State-affiliated groups are also active. Since May, ISIS has attributed insurgent activities in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger tri-border area to its West Africa Province affiliate, rather than to what was previously known as Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

In 2012 a Tuareg separatist uprising against the state was exploited by Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda who took key cities in the desert north of Mali.

France began its Operation Serval military intervention in its former colony early the next year, driving the jihadists from the towns, and the MINUSMA peacekeeping force was then established.

But the militant groups morphed into more nimble formations operating in rural areas, and the insurgency has gradually spread to central and southern regions of Mali and across the borders into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Large swathes of Mali remain outside government control, and inter-ethnic bloodshed is a regular occurrence.

The Serval mission evolved in August 2014 into Operation Barkhane, which has a mandate for counter-terrorism operations across the Sahel. Roughly 4,500 French troops are deployed in the region, including around 2,700 soldiers in Mali. Personnel from Estonia and helicopters from the United Kingdom support the Barkhane force, and Denmark has announced plans send two helicopters and up to 70 troops.

Barkhane focuses activity in insurgent-hit Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, and troops work alongside other international operations, including the roughly 14,000-strong MINUSMA United Nations stabilization mission in Mali, and the G5 Sahel Joint Force, the long-planned 4,500-strong joint counter-terrorism force comprising troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

France spearheaded the G5 Sahel initiative, but it has been undermined by lack of training, poor equipment and a shortage of funds. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres has long-called for regular U.N. funding for the G5 Sahel Joint Force, but the U.S. has pushed back against direct funding, preferring instead bilateral funding for individual states.

In 2016, Boko Haram splintered into several groups, with one of these groups emerging as the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), currently led by Abdullah Ibn Umar al-Barnawi (aka Ba Idrissa) and Abu Musab al-Barnawi, as a shura member, like reported by soufangroup.com.

Since the 2016 split, ISWAP has surged in sophistication while the faction once led by Abubakr Shekau has lagged behind in both tactics and strategy. Now dominating large tracts of rural Borno, frequent raids on military outposts have strengthened ISWAP and the group has innovated significantly, especially in developing up-armored suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIEDS), often depicted in the group’s videos.

Because neither Shekau’s faction nor al-Qaeda-aligned groups in Mali have employed SVBIEDs since 2016, it is probable that the core group of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria transferred its technological know-how to ISWAP, either through direct exchanges between fighters in Libya or Nigeria, or through encrypted online communications.The Islamic State has also transferred media templates and graphics to ISWAP, whose media is fully incorporated into the Islamic State’s centralized media apparatus. Recent reports emerging in September 2019 about ISWAP having even more sophisticated drones than the Nigerian Army imply ISWAP’s innovations and growing sophistication is related to its close relationship with the Islamic State.

Shekau’s faction is unlikely to have continued upgrading drone capabilities and certainly not with the Islamic State, which approved Shekau’s ejection from ISWAP in 2016. ISWAP has not featured drones in any of its videos, photos, or other propaganda. Its use of drones, therefore, is strictly tactical: spying on military positions. Since mid-2018, ISWAP has focused on targeting military barracks in rural Borno and avoided attacking densely populated civilian areas because it seeks to win over the civilian population and eventually govern rural Borno.

It also seeks to distinguish itself from Shekau’s faction, which has targeted both Muslim and Christian civilians on the basis that they are infidels for not joining Shekau’s jihad and killed innocent civilians, leading to backlash against the jihadists.While violent non-state actors in the Middle East have used drones to launch spectacular attacks, ISWAP is unlikely to follow their lead. Despite its rural Borno conquests, ISWAP has avoided targeting Westerners or even attacking the military in major urban centers in Borno State, such as Maiduguri.

ISWAP has preferred to maintain a low profile except in rural Borno. By generally laying low, ISWAP disincentivizes foreign intervention or greater Nigerian pressure against it, focusing instead on its long-term goal of raiding barracks and governing rural Borno. To achieve these objectives, ISWAP employs SVBIEDS, drones, and other tactics effectively, yet discreetly.

A major attack using drones on key economic installations or, for example, a foreign aid organization, would largely prove counterproductive and potentially undermine ISWAP’s strategy.Even if ISWAP does not move to aggressively adopt most emerging technologies at this stage in the conflict, drones are still likely to continue contributing to its successes on the battlefield. The military recently shifted to a new ‘supercamp’ strategy by consolidating soldiers in several well-manned encampments in Borno instead of numerous poorly protected rural positions.

Nevertheless, ISWAP has still shown itself capable of ambushing the military when it leaves these ‘supercamps’ to deliver supplies to towns or other soldiers on frontlines. ISWAP’s use of drones are among the most effective means of detecting those military movements, conducting ambushes, and undermining the military’s new ‘supercamp’ strategy.

A Somali official says a suicide car bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives at the gate of a military airstrip which is a base for U.S. and Somali forces, like reported by heraldonline.com.

Yusuf Abdourahman, a security official with the Lower Shabelle regional administration, told The Associated Press that a burst of gunfire could be heard across the base after bombing, suggesting an ongoing attack on the base.

Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, have claimed the responsibility for the attack.

The U.S. military uses Belidogle airstrip in the Lower Shabelle region as a base where it launches drones that attack al-Shabab and trains Somali troops.

Seven military personnel were killed on Thursday, September 26 in a “complex attack” in central Mali’s violence-torn Mopti region, the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) said.

“A FAMa mission escorting two trucks of fertilizer from Douentza to Sévaré was ambushed at the Batoma junction at around 10:45 a.m.” FAMa said in a release.

“The first vehicle first struck an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). This was followed by gunfire. During the operation, 7 personnel were killed,” the release said.

Minister of Communication Yaya Sangare in a later statement said the military mission was escorting both “food trucks and trucks loaded with fertilizer.”

Sangare confirmed that seven personnel were killed and said that others were injured. “Reinforcements were sent to the area to track down the attackers,” Sangare added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Many armed groups are active in Mali and the wider Sahel region. Most insurgent attacks are attributed to the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM) which formed in March 2017 from a merger of several smaller groups including the Sahara branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and Al-Mourabitoun. JNIM’s leadership has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Islamic State-affiliated groups are also active. Since May, ISIS has attributed insurgent activities in the Mali-Burkina Faso-Niger tri-border area to its West Africa Province affiliate, rather than to what was previously known as Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

In 2012 a Tuareg separatist uprising against the state was exploited by Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda who took key cities in the desert north of Mali.

France began its Operation Serval military intervention in its former colony early the next year, driving the jihadists from the towns, and the MINUSMA peacekeeping force was then established.

But the militant groups morphed into more nimble formations operating in rural areas, and the insurgency has gradually spread to central and southern regions of Mali and across the borders into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Large swathes of Mali remain outside government control, and inter-ethnic bloodshed is a regular occurrence.

JNIM, which strongly opposes the French presence in the Sahel, reinforced its opposition to the former colonial power in a September 5 statement, warning G5 Sahel governments that attacks against their forces would continue while they support the France-led Operation Barkhane counter-terrorism force.

Barkhane evolved in August 2014 from the Serval mission, and has a mandate for counter-terrorism operations across the Sahel. Roughly 4,500 French troops are deployed in the region, including around 2,700 soldiers in Mali. Personnel from Estonia and helicopters from the United Kingdom support the Barkhane force, and Denmark has announced plans send two helicopters and up to 70 troops.

Barkhane focuses activity in insurgent-hit Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, and troops work alongside other international operations, including the roughly 14,000-strong MINUSMA United Nations stabilization mission in Mali, and the G5 Sahel Joint Force, the long-planned 4,500-strong joint counter-terrorism force comprising troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

France spearheaded the G5 Sahel initiative, but it has been undermined by lack of training, poor equipment and a shortage of funds. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres has long-called for regular U.N. funding for the G5 Sahel Joint Force, but the U.S. has pushed back against direct funding, preferring instead bilateral funding for individual states.