At least six people were killed when suspected Boko Haram fighters attacked a town in northeast Nigeria, in the latest attack against vulnerable, isolated rural communities, the local government said like reported by vanguardngr.com.

Bukar Wakil Tawu, secretary of the Magumeri local government area, said about 20 people believed to be from the jihadist group attacked Jaddannam at about 9:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Friday.

“They killed six people and burnt almost the whole town. They also burnt livestock and food supplies from recent harvests,” he told AFP from the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, nearly 50 kilometres (30 miles) away. “I went to the town yesterday (Sunday), where I met the poor residents. They are peasants who rely on subsistence farming and their livestock. “They have now lost all their belongings. We are appealing to the government to come to their aid and for patrols to be intensified because the area is remote and it has relatively huge population.” Eight years of conflict have left at least 20,000 people dead and more than 2.6 million homeless in northeast Nigeria but has also devastated infrastructure, including telecommunications, leaving communities virtually cut off.

Local residents had to travel to Maiduguri to report the attack. Recent weeks have seen an increase in Boko Haram activity in northeast Nigeria and the Far North region of neighbouring Cameroon after the end of the rainy season in September. At least 20 people were killed in a series of raids and suicide bomb attacks in the space of a few days last month, while civilians were also killed when their vehicles hit landmines planted by the Islamists.

Those deaths — and the latest in Jaddannam — underline the continued threat posed by Boko Haram, despite claims from the military and the government that the insurgency is nearing an end. Boko Haram fighters loyal to factional leader Abu Mus’ab al-Barnawi have been known to operate in the Magumeri area. In July, 19 soldiers and 33 militia members were among 69 killed when Boko Haram ambushed a heavily-armed convoy of oil exploration workers.

Thousands of Ethiopian troops have crossed into Somalia to join a large-scale offensive against al-Shabab extremists just weeks after Somalia’s worst attack left more than 350 people dead, border residents said Thursday according to washingtonpost.com.

Somalia’s president, vowing a “state of war,” has visited countries in the region to seek more military support since the massive truck bombing Oct. 14 in the capital, Mogadishu.

Somalia is preparing for an offensive with African Union multinational forces that is meant to push al-Shabab fighters out of their strongholds in Lower Shabelle and Middle Shabelle regions, where many deadly attacks on Mogadishu and Somali and African Union bases have been launched.

Somali officials have said the United States military, which this year has stepped up the fight against al-Shabab with well over a dozen drone strikes, is expected to play a supporting role.

Abdullahi Yusuf, an elder in Luq town, told The Associated Press that Ethiopian troops in tanks and armored vehicles passed through Thursday morning toward southwestern Somalia.

Muhummed Muse, a resident of Dolow town, also said dozens of armored vehicles carrying Ethiopian troops had passed through.

Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Workineh Gebeyehu, confirmed that troops had entered Somalia.

“It is a routine or normal military activity of the Ethiopian contingent based in Somalia to support the fight against terrorism,” a foreign ministry spokesman, Meles Alem, told the AP. “Ethiopia is one of the troop-contributing countries under AMISOM,” the African Union force.

Last month’s bombing brought collective outrage in long-fractured Somalia, with thousands of Mogadishu residents marching in a defiant rally against al-Shabab. The country’s Somali-American leader, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, faces the challenge of pulling together regional powers while the federal government tries to assert itself beyond the capital and other major cities.

Al-Shabab in some cases controls villages just dozens of miles outside Mogadishu.

Five African nations who formed a new counterterrorism force conducted their first joint operation this week in the tri-border area between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, like reported by thecipherbrief.com.

The purpose of the Oct. 30 mission was to show the force is “operational,” Mali’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Abdoulaye Diop, told The Cipher Brief.

African nations are trying to demonstrate they’re taking control of their own security, as they face a rising threat from instability and militancy. As ISIS loses territory in Iraq and Syria, and al Qaeda is pushed out of Afghanistan, both terrorist groups are looking to Africa for safe haven — Europe’s neighbor and a continent that boasts major U.S. allies like Niger and Djibouti, home of America’s only permanent military base in Africa.

“We see in Africa a number of local insurgencies that rebranded themselves and pledging [sic] allegiance to ISIS over the last year,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford at a press briefing last month on the Oct. 4 Niger attack that killed four U.S. service members.

There are now three battalions from the new counterterrorism force, called the Joint Force Group of Five (G5) Sahel, in the tri-border area where Monday’s operation was launched, minister Diop said on Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

The G5 Sahel – comprised of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania – is also placing two battalions in the border area between Niger and Chad and two others between Mali and Mauritania, he said.

African nations don’t want to wait for ISIS to attack. “We have also to bring the fight and the terror to them,” said Diop, who is also Chair of Ministers of the G5 Sahel.

The idea for this force dates back to 2015, but it was officially launched in February. The stated purpose is to combat the growing threat of extremist groups in the Sahel, along with human traffickers and drug smugglers, who are often intertwined with extremist groups.

The UN Security Council met on Monday to discuss how it could support the G5 Sahel force.

“The situation in the Sahel challenges us all,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the 15-member body.

The United States on Monday already pledged $60 million to support the Sahel force.

“This money will bolster our regional partners in their fight to ensure security and stability in the face of ISIS and affiliated groups and other terrorist networks,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a statement. The funding is pending consultation with Congress.

In addition to the new U.S. funding, the European Union has pledged nearly $60 million, France has pledged $9 million bilaterally and the G5 nations have pledged about $60 million.

The G5 Sahel hopes to receive $450 million in total by next year, following a donor conference in Brussels this December.

The money will be used to help the 5,000 troops that constitute the force – all from the G5 countries – to be well-equipped and well-trained.

The vision is to have small, specialized teams of high quality, rather than high quantity, said Foreign Minister Diop. He noted, though, that the 5,000 troops are an initial response, and that number could eventually increase to 10,000.

But some remain skeptical. In an open letter to the United Nations Security Council in April, CEO of the International Crisis Group Jean-Marie Guéhenno wrote that the benefits of adding another security force to the region are “unclear.”

“Their deployment risks aggravating what amounts to a security traffic jam,” he wrote, noting the French “Barkhane” counterterrorism operation, the UN mission “MINUSMA,” Malian security forces, and various armed groups that are all active in the region.

“The issue is the extent to which the G5 Sahel security force actually does anything,” former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell told The Cipher Brief. “Or is it a fig leaf by which weak, unresponsive governments cover their inability to address the drivers of popular support for jihadi movements?”

Five children were killed and two others wounded by a suicide bomber described as a “young girl” in a northern region of Cameroon plagued by Boko Haram attacks, sources said.

“A suicide bomber blew herself up at around 7.45 pm (1845 GMT)” in the village of Zamga, two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Nigerian border, said a security officer responsible for the zone, reached from the capital Yaounde.

“Five children were killed and two others wounded,” he said on condition of anonymity, adding that the suicide bomber was also killed in the blast.

The attack and the death toll were confirmed to AFP by another security source. A group of children was playing when “a young girl slipped in” among them, triggering her explosive charge, the safety officer explained.

On Sunday and Monday, at least 20 people were killed in attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria and Cameroon.

Since 2014, when Cameroon went to war against Boko Haram, the jihadi group has killed “2,000 civilians and soldiers” and abducted “a thousand people” in the far north of the country, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). Since its emergence eight years ago, Boko Haram has killed at least 20,000 people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

Al-Shabaab fighters regained control of a key town in southern Somalia today, Garowe Online reported.

Just hours after African Union (AU) troops left Rasadaay, located 179 kilometres southwest of the capital Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab’s caravan of fighters moved in without any battle.

It is unclear why AU troops withdrew from the strategic town.

It is feared that Al-Shabaab’s control of Rasaaday may allow for attacks to take placeagainst AU troops in neighbouring Barawe and Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab conducted a suicide operation on a hotel in Mogadishu last weekend, killing 29people.

The Al-Qaeda-linked group seeks to dislodge the Government of Somalia and apply a strict interpretation of Islamic law across the country.

The United States pledged $60 million to a new United Nations-backed antiterrorism force from five African countries including Niger, where four American soldiers were killed early this month, like reported by nytimes.com.

The pledge, announced by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson in Washington and Ambassador Nikki R. Haley at the United Nations, came as the United Nations Security Council was meeting about the vast and lawless Sahel region in western and north-central Africa, where the force will operate.

“Defeating terrorism depends on making sure terrorist organizations cannot have safe havens on any continent,” Mr. Tillerson said in a statement announcing the pledge, which will require congressional approval.

“This is a fight we must win, and these funds will play a key role in achieving that mission,” he said.

The 5,000-member force of soldiers and police officers, with recruits from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, was created by those countries in February to combat the growing threat of extremist groups, drug smugglers and human traffickers in the Sahel.

With little government control, the region is regarded as a fertile haven for Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and their offshoots.

The Security Council unanimously endorsed the force in June but questions of how its $500 million annual cost will be financed have not been resolved. The European Union, which has committed about $58 million to the force, will convene a donor conference in December.

The United States, the biggest single financial contributor to United Nations peacekeeping operations, has been seeking to cut their costs and had resisted proposals to commit peacekeeping resources to the five-nation Sahel force.

But the $60 million pledge suggested the American position may be evolving. It was announced less than four weeks after four American soldiers, including Special Forces members, were killed during a joint patrol with counterparts from Niger near the Mali border.

Ms. Haley said in her remarks about the Sahel force at the Security Council that “we understand the force will need ongoing support and are eager for opportunities to work with our partners to make this effort a successful one.”

The American pledge was welcomed by France, which has taken the lead in Western backing for the Sahel force. France has strong post-colonial ties to all five of the African countries that contributed.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian of France, who led the Security Council meeting on Monday, told reporters afterward that he was “delighted by the statement of American support” and that it was “unquestionably an important development.”

It remains unclear exactly how the force will coordinate actions with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, known as Minusma, one of the biggest and most dangerous peacekeeping operations in Africa with more than 14,000 personnel. Minusma peacekeepers have been attacked frequently by militants.

Mr. Le Drian said he was confident that “we will be able to refine the coordination between Minusma and the Joint Force, which is by its very nature a multilateral force.”

Cameroon’s semi-arid Far North region has been a target of Boko Haram suicide bombings and raids for eight years as the insurgency spilled over the border from Nigeria, killing 20,000 and uprooting nearly 3 million in the Lake Chad region, like reported by trtworld.com

At least 16 people were killed in a raid and suicide attack in Cameroon and Nigeria on Monday, in the latest violence blamed on Boko Haram militants.

A civilian militia member said 11 people had been “slaughtered” overnight Sunday-Monday in the village of Gouderi, in the Kolofata region of Cameroon’s Far North.

“Boko Haram’s incursion in Gouderi was an act of revenge,” said the militia member, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.

Civilians were also the target of a suicide bomber at a mosque in Ajiri Yala, 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, in northeast Nigeria.

The leader of the local Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) helping the military with security said the attack happened at about 4:30 am (0330 GMT).

“A male suicide bomber disguised as a worshipper entered the mosque while people were gathering for the morning prayers,” Modu Bukar said.

“He detonated his explosives. He killed five people and injured several others.”

‘Major concern’

The violence followed another attempted suicide attack against civilians and a clash between soldiers and militants at the weekend that saw the militants suffer heavy casualties.

Nigeria maintains Boko Haram is a spent force but the latest attacks underline the persistent threat posed by the group, whose insurgency has killed at least 20,000 since 2009.

Boko Haram typically never claims responsibility but has used suicide bombing as a frequent tactic in its eight-year insurgency.

Mosques that do not ascribe to its extremist views are seen as legitimate targets, as are people and places seen to be supportive of the secular government.

On Sunday, a CJTF member manning a checkpoint in the Muna area of Maiduguri was killed and another injured when two women strapped with explosives blew themselves up.

A day earlier, a military source said, troops, inflicted heavy losses on a large contingent of Boko Haram fighters near the Yobe village of Goniri.

The previous weekend, 14 people were killed when three women detonated their explosives near the Muna Garage camp, which is home to tens of thousands of people made homeless by the violence.

The United Nations warned recently that attack against internally displaced people (IDPs) in camps across the region was “a major concern.”

Lurking remnants

Communities in hard-to-reach areas of the remote region are also vulnerable and at the weekend, two women blew themselves up in the Gulak area of Madagali, in the far north of Adamawa state.

A former Madagali local government area chairman, Maina Ularamu, said there were two blasts in Dar village on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

“Our suspicion is that they intended to attack the church, which is located inside the primary school about 100 metres away from the scene of the explosion,” he said.

Ularamu said locals suspected the two women had come to Dar from the Sambisa Forest, in neighbouring Borno, where Boko Haram is known to have bases.

The military said earlier this year it had retaken control of the former national park but there are reports the militants have moved back in.

They are also known to have been holed up in the Mandara mountains that lie east of Madagali and form the border between Nigeria and Cameroon.

On August 2, Boko Haram fighters stormed the village of Mildu, near Madagali, killing six.

Ularamu said Boko Haram “remnants are still lurking” in remote villages and the Sambisa Forest, and troop reinforcements were needed.

Attacks on civilians have largely been attributed to the Boko Haram faction led by Abubakar Shekau.

Strikes against the military are generally blamed on the Daesh group-supported faction headed by Abu Mus’ab al-Barnawi.

At least five people were killed on Monday when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in northeastern Nigeria, a militia member assisting the military against Boko Haram jihadists said, like reported by news24.com.

The leader of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) in Ajiri Yala, some 15km north of Maiduguri, said the attack happened at about 04:30.

“A male suicide bomber disguised as a worshipper entered the mosque while people were gathering for the morning prayers,” he told AFP by telephone.

“He detonated his explosives. He killed five people and injured several others.”

Boko Haram typically never claims responsibility but has used suicide bombing as a frequent tactic in its eight-year insurgency to establish a hardline Islamic state.

Mosques that do not ascribe to its extremist views are seen as legitimate targets, as are people and places seen to be supportive of the secular government.

Major concern 

On Sunday, a CJTF member manning a checkpoint in the Muna area of Maiduguri was killed and another injured when two women strapped with explosives blew themselves up.

A week earlier, 14 people were killed when three women detonated their explosives near the Muna Garage camp, which is home to tens of thousands of people made homeless by the violence.

The United Nations warned recently that attack against internally displaced people (IDPs) in camps across the region “continue to be a major concern”.

But Boko Haram also poses a threat to the military, despite government claims the group has been weakened to the point of defeat by a sustained counter-insurgency.

Last week, at least 15 soldiers were killed in a raid on a military camp north of Damaturu, which is the capital of Yobe state bordering Borno.

The so-called Islamic State group, which backs the Boko Haram faction headed by Abu Mus’ab al-Barnawi, claimed the attack.

On October 4, four United States servicemen and five soldiers from Niger were killed in a battle with an estimated 50 members of an ISIS affiliate.

The US casualties are raising eyebrows in Washington, with senators reportedly “shocked” and “stunned” to find that the US has more than 1,000 personnel in Niger and neighboring countries, like reported by jpost.com.

As controversies swirl, the US is being called upon to support UN backing for more counter- terrorism operations led by France in the Sahel, the area between the Sahara Desert to the north and the savannas region to the south.

According to a March document from the US Government Accountability Office, the US has greatly expanded its security presence abroad, especially in Africa, since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The US government has engaged in numerous efforts to build the capacity of foreign partners to address security-related threats,” the Government Accountability Office said, claiming it “identified 194 Department of Defense security cooperation and state security assistance efforts” that address security-related threats. A number of these programs are tailored specifically to confront the growing threat of terrorism in countries that border the Sahel. These include countries such as Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia, which borders Somalia.

Between 1997 and 2012, the US provided training to 215,000 personnel from states in Africa. Since the establishment of an Africa Command in 2007, the focus has increasingly shifted to fighting terrorism alongside peacekeeping. The long list of US-supported programs include the Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund, the US Army’s African Land Forces Engagement Summit, a specific program for Support for Counterterrorism Operations in Africa, Peace Keeping Operations Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance, a “rapid response partnership” and a series of regional counterterrorism partnerships.

In the Sahara, the US “assists partners in West and North Africa to increase their immediate and long-term capabilities to address terrorist threats and prevent the spread of violent extremism,” according to the State Department. This includes efforts to “contain and marginalize” terrorist groups as well as “disrupt efforts to recruit, train and provision terrorists and extremists” and counterterrorist groups that seek to establish “safe havens.”

It was during one of these types of missions in October that something went awry. The 12 US soldiers were supposed to be part of an advise-and-assist mission with 30 soldiers from Niger.

Just before a raid targeting a terrorist commander, the target crossed into Mali and the joint US-Niger team, instead, went to search his abandoned camp. According to an October 23 US Defense Department press conference by Gen. Joseph Dunford, the soldiers drove 85 km. north from the capital of Niamey to the village of Tongo Tongo. The village is just across the border from the Reserve Partielle de Faune D’Ansongo-Menake in Mali and the Sahel reserve in Burkina Faso.

The US-Niger forces were ambushed after meeting with locals at a village. The enemy was well prepared with heavy machine guns, RPGs and driving on “technicals,” or trucks with machine guns mounted on the back.

The Americans radioed for assistance and an unarmed drone arrived overhead. Two hours after the battle began, French Mirage jets also came to assist. Eventually, the survivors were evacuated by the French military.

Despite efforts to downplay the incident, the picture that is painted is of a large shadow war on terrorism in Africa that goes relatively unreported in Western media. The ambush conjures up images of the battle of Black Hawk Down in 1993 in Somalia and the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya, which led to the death of 19 and four Americans, respectively. Both attacks also led to political discussions and policy changes in Libya and Somalia, both of which are still plagued by terrorism. In mid-October, more than 300 people were killed in an attack in Mogadishu. Another 23 were murdered in an attack on October 28.

Niger is an example of a wider problem affecting the region. According to the US State Department, there are numerous terrorist groups in Niger, including Boko Haram, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and ISIS. “Niger’s long borders and areas of harsh terrain made effective border security a challenge, specifically in the north, along the border with Algeria, Libya, and Mali.”

These ungoverned spaces allow AQIM and other groups to transit throughout the Sahel and Sahara. Considering how ISIS exploited the breakdown in Syria and Iraqi states to spread quickly in 2014, the role of ISIS among these other groups’ points to a worrisome phenomenon.

The danger of these groups sometimes goes unrecognized until it is too late. In 2012, Jean Herskovits, a professor of history at the State University of New York, wrote in The New York Times, “There is no proof that a well-organized, ideologically coherent terrorist group called Boko Haram even exists today.”

She urged against the US being drawn into a Nigerian war on terror because “placing Boko Haram on the foreign terrorist list would… make more Nigerians fear and distrust America.” Five years later, Boko Haram is still making headlines with its massacres, including recent reports on how it straps suicide bombs to girls.

Now the US is debating a French-drafted UN Security Council resolution that would give backing to a multinational force to fight terrorism. This is called the G5 Sahel force, which has existed since 2014 and consists of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Already there are 4,000 French soldiers in and around Niger fighting terrorism alongside 35,000 African partner troops, according to Dunford.

The G5 force builds upon the work of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership which was created in 2005 with 11 countries in the same region, with a broader membership that included Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Cameroon.

French Defense Minister Florence Parly has encouraged the US to support the G5 force. These forces are underfinanced.

According to Reuters, the $490 million budget is only 25% funded.

As ISIS is defeated in Syria and Iraq, it is not clear if Africa will emerge as a growing base of fighters. However, the northern part of the continent is fertile ground for similar groups. It is a vast area that unites various terrorist groups from different backgrounds.

Although not directly linked to the Sahel, recent flare-ups in fighting in the Sinai and battles between Egyptian police and extremists in Egypt’s Western Desert are connected to this global battle.

An organisation linked to al-Qaeda claimed an attack in northern Mali that killed two soldiers, the US monitoring group SITE said.

Claims were made by Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, the Mali-based branch of al-Qaeda, on the “Telegram” channel of the group’s so-called Al-Zallaqa Media Foundation, it said.

“Fighters mounted a surprise attack on the Malian army position in Soumpi, killing two soldiers and burning military vehicles as well as those belonging to Sogea-Satom,” a French road construction company that the troops had been “guarding”, it said.

A second communique reported attacks on gendarmerie posts in Dioro and Ouan in central Mali on Monday and a landmine blast on a Malian army vehicle in the Mopti region on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the Malian defence ministry said two troops had been killed and a third injured in a “terrorist” attack in Soumpi.

Groups of Islamic extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of the desert north of Mali in March and April 2012 at the expense of Tuareg rebels, but were chased out of Sahara towns by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013, which is still under way.

Mali’s army, French soldiers and a UN mission (MINUSMA) have no control of large tracts of the country, which regularly come under attack in spite of a peace accord signed with Tuareg leaders in May and June 2015, aimed at isolating the jihadists.

Since 2015, jihadist attacks have spread to the centre and south of Mali and latterly to neighbouring countries, particularly Burkina Faso and Niger.

The creation of Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen was announced on March 2 as a fusion of the groups Ansar Dine, the Al-Murabitoun of Mokhtar Belmokhtar and the “Emirate of the Sahara,” a branch of a Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI).