France on Sunday promised strong support for a new multinational force that will carry out military operations against extremists in Africa’s vast Sahel region, while President Emmanuel Macron met in Mali with leaders from the five regional countries involved, like reported by ap.org.

Macron said France will provide military support for operations as well as 70 tactical vehicles and communication equipment.

Leaders from Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad – known as the G5 – must clarify their roles and contributions for the 5,000-strong force to attract more support from outside countries, Macron said.

“We cannot hide behind words, and must take actions,” he said.

Emphasizing the threat, the recently formed extremist group Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, based in Mali, on Saturday released a proof-of-life video showing six foreign hostages seized in the region in recent years.

The new anti-terror force, meant to be operational in the next few months, will operate in the region along with a 12,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, which has become the deadliest in the world, and France’s own 5,000-strong Barkhane military operation, its largest overseas mission.

The European Union already has pledged some 50 million euros ($57 million) in support of the new G5 force. Sunday’s meetings are meant to lay out next steps and find more financial backing.

In mid-June, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution welcoming the deployment of the new force. The U.N., however, will not contribute financially.

Two women bombers blew themselves up in a refugee camp in southeastern Niger, killing two other people in a suspected attack by Boko Haram Islamists from neighbouring Nigeria.

Boko Haram’s insurgency began in northeast Nigeria and has spread to Chad, Cameroon and Niger, claiming more than 20,000 lives and displacing 2.6 million people. They are increasingly staging suicide attacks using women and girls.

Wednesday’s attack took place in Kabalewa, a village near the southeastern Niger city of Diffa, which is close to Nigeria.

“Two women suicide bombers infiltrated the refugee camp and blew themselves up, killing two civilians in the camp,” an aid worker said. Private radio stations said the victims were a man and a woman. A local official confirmed the attack but did not give a toll.

Boko Haram members have been staging regular attacks in the Diffa region since 2015. There are more than 300,000 refugees and displaced people sheltered in the area.

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution calling on the more than 15,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Mali to help the beleaguered country’s military re-establish security across Malian territory, like reported by ap.org.

The resolution adopted Thursday night extends the mandate for the U.N. force until June 30, 2018, and keeps its current ceiling at up to 13,289 military personnel and 1,920 police.

It asks the U.N. peacekeepers to coordinate with a 5,000-strong force from five African nations including Mali that will be fighting the growing threat from extremists in the vast Sahel region and with a 4,000-member French force fighting extremists in the five countries.

A French-led intervention drove out Islamic extremists from strongholds in northern Mali in 2013 but sporadic attacks continue to target U.N. and French troops.

Lack of access to hungry parts of Somalia controlled by Islamist militants is threatening the lives of tens of thousands of malnourished children, a charity said to reuters.com, as the war-torn nation risks falling back into famine.

Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), often fatal without medical care, has “skyrocketed” to more than three times the emergency threshold of two percent in Hiraan region’s Mataban District, a survey by Save the Children found.

“Scaling up to provide services to everyone affected is a challenge because we have around two million people living in al Shabaab controlled areas,” said Hassan Noor Saadi, Save the Children’s Somalia country director.

“Getting aid to them is not easy.”

Al Shabaab militants ruled most of south-central Somalia until 2011, when they were driven out of the capital Mogadishu by African Union troops, and still carry out major attacks.

In 2011, some 260,000 Somalis died of famine caused by drought, conflict and lack of access to humanitarian aid.

Somali’s erratic spring rains were not good enough to guarantee crop growth, while livestock continue to die, leaving families with little to feed their children, Saadi said.

“When animals die, there is no food, no milk, and no assets to make money off and subsequently buy food,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

More than 275,000 children potentially face suffer life-threatening severe acute malnutrition this year, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.

“If these children are not given special foods to help them recover, their immunity will go down and they will become prone to opportunistic diseases,” Saadi said.

“They can either die from these diseases or from hunger.”

Some 714,000 Somalis have fled their homes due to drought and failed crops since last November, joining 1 million previously internally displaced Somalis, the U.N. says.

Aid agencies are also struggling to save lives across the border in Ethiopia’s Somali region, where nomads whose livestock have been killed by drought have settled in informal camps.

Medecins Sans Frontieres teams have treated more than 6,000 children with severe acute malnutrition in the area since January, a tenfold increase on 2016, the medical charity said on Monday.

“These numbers are the highest our teams there have seen in ten years,” MSF spokeswoman Rosie Slater said in emailed comments, adding that 67 children died in June.

“An acute humanitarian emergency is unfolding.”

The Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, in a new video said his group was responsible for last week’s ambush of a military-escorted convoy of travellers along Maiduguri-Damboa road.

PREMIUM TIMES reported the ambush during which many civilians were abducted including 16 women. Though this newspaper was well informed by officials knowledgeable about the ambush that the women were police officers, PREMIUM TIMES did not reveal their identities in order not to jeopardise their safety and lives in the hands of their abductors, who may not have had the knowledge that they were serving police officers.

The police in Borno State had said at least two persons, including a police officer were killed while six others were injured.

The police, however, denied being aware of the abductions.

The Borno Police Public Relations Officer, Victor Isukwu, categorically stated that the command was not aware of such abduction. This denial was made even though relations and colleagues of the abducted persons lamented that the 16 policewomen were missing.

In a YouTube video released on Monday, the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, confirmed that his group did carry out the Damboa ambush.

Mr. Shekau who spoke in a very unusual calm mood appeared in a room sitting alone and having his AK47 rifle across his shoulder, with a huge chewing stick on his right hand.

He did not hold any piece of paper when he spoke but looked sickly and tired.

He said the ambush on the convoy along Maiduguri-Damboa road was a “victory” given to them by God and that the policewomen abducted were taken as slaves.

Mr. Shekau said the ease with which they conducted the ambush was an indication that he still commanded large following and his group has not been defeated.

He also issued an unusual threat to Muslim clerics whom he said are misleading the world on the true teaching of Islam. The video clip featured some of the Muslim clerics as they condemned the existence and activities of Boko Haram.

SHEKAU’S SPEECH

The 14 minutes video showed footages of how the attack was carried out, and how Boko Haram gunmen all in black attires continued to open fire on moving vehicles.

“The job that our men carried out along Damboa road was a victory from God. We are the ones that did it,” Mr. Shekau said in the video.

“The people of Nigeria and the so-called Islamic clerics who are betrayers, we are calling on you all to repent and return to God. Your leaders are feeding you with lies on what they have not done; but we are well and in good shape. If you could come and have a look at the life we are living here, most of you would rather wish to be with us to enjoy what we are enjoying. We are living fine because it is God we work for.

“So, this is to tell you that we did the Damboa road ambush; and the operation had put a lie to all claims of Nigeria soldiers, the police and other top government officials that they have finished Boko Haram. But the Damboa road ambush had made it clear that they have been telling lies to the world. A liar can never be victorious here and in hereafter.

“We have confiscated several cars, and we also have taken women, among them were top policewomen. God had given the senior policewomen to us as slaves and has put them in the custody we that are known as the Jamaatu Ahlil Sunna li Dawati wal Jihad, which you called with the derogatory name as Boko Haram.

“In a nutshell, we did the Damboa road operation and we are the ones that abducted the policewomen; But this is nothing compared to what the government and soldiers of Nigeria had done to our own women and wives, and even our children. Our friends have been in detention for years, many were killed. So, if we abduct few women, who are not more than ten or thereabout, it’s not a big deal.

“Secondly, my message is to Islamic clerics in Nigeria who despite their position are giving wrong interpretation to the Holy Quran; you are playing with hell fire. You have to be careful because Quran has divided mankind into three; some are believers, some are Hypocrites and some are non-believers. There is no way we Muslims in mosques and Christians in churches and you think we can work together.

“This has never happened before even during the life time of all apostles of the prophet.

“If you are insisting on dialogue we have to have a situation where Muslims are ruling with Sharia, and the non-Muslims agree to remain by the side without interference, then we can discuss on their rights; such non-Muslims are the ones that could be labelled as the trusted.

“But where the country is being run by constitution and democracy, such kind of dialogue cannot be possible. And you the Islamic clerics are all out there preaching in the mosques and spoiling the image of Islam. If you don’t repent you shall not end well.

“That is my message, that we are the ones that took these women. And that I am Abubakar Shekau the leader of the group. We call on Nigerians to repent and to come and work for Islam, in accordance with the caliphate that was established by Uthman Dan Fodio, which was a caliphate built upon truth and believe in God.”

The police and the military have not reacted to the video as at the time of this report.

Eight people, including four children returning to school after Eid celebrations, were killed Tuesday by a roadside bomb in eastern Kenya near the border with Somalia, police said according to dailymail.co.uk.

“We have eight victims — four children and four police,” a police spokesman told AFP following the explosion between Mararani and Kiunga, just a handful of kilometres (miles) from the border.

The blast bore the hallmarks of similar bombings blamed on Shabaab Islamists who have targeted security forces in the past in the region.

Seven police officers and a civilian were killed at the end of May when an armoured vehicle drove over a roadside bomb in southeastern Kenya, a week after 14 others died in three similar attacks the group claimed.

Across the border, the Al-Qaeda linked extremist group last week claimed responsibility after driving an explosives-laden minibus into local government offices in the capital Mogadishu, killing at least 10 people.

That attack followed hot on the heels of assaults on two Mogadishu restaurants which killed at least 18 people.

The group has also launched attacks in Uganda, which, like Kenya, contributes troops to a 22,000-strong African Union force in Somalia.

Johan Gustafsson, the 42-year-old Swedish man held captive by an al-Qaida linked group in Mali since 2011, has been released, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs said Monday.

“It is with great pleasure that I can announce that Johan Gustafsson has been released and can return to Sweden,” Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement issued on the government website.

“Johan’s situation has touched many of us and extensive efforts have been made to secure his release,” she said.

“The government would like to highlight the excellent cooperation that has marked the work of the Foreign Ministry, the National Police’s operational department and other Swedish and foreign authorities — work that finally made it possible for Johan to come home,” Wallstrom said in the statement.

According to Swedish newspaper Expressen, Gustafsson has landed in Sweden.

Gustafsson was traveling through Africa on a motorbike when he was kidnapped in Timbuktu by AQIM, al-Qaida’s North African branch, in November 2011. Since then, he has been a prisoner of the group.

Information about Gustafsson’s well-being has been scarce during the days he was held hostage. But his family in Sweden received intermittent signs, including video footage, that he was alive. It was in March that they were assured of their son’s good health, Swedish public television broadcaster SVT reported.

The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs will hold a press conference later tonight.

Goran Gustafsson, Johan Gustafsson’s father, would not confirm or comment the information to Swedish news agency TT.

According to Johan Ripas, SVT’s correspondent in Africa, the captors demanded an enormous ransom — a sum of nearly 23 million U.S. dollars was mentioned. It is still unclear what has changed, SVT reported.

“There was talk of trying to reduce the ransom to cover ‘food and lodging’ during captivity,” Ripas told SVT.

Staff Sergeant Paiva Benido (40), the father of two young children was part of the Portuguese contingent on the European Union Training Mission to Mali comprised of ten members, like reported by theportugalnews.com.

An army statement said that the soldier was killed “because of fighting following a rebel attack that caused other injuries among the soldiers”.

Other soldiers were injured, “including one Portuguese”, who “has completely recovered”, the statement said.

Following the incident, Portugal’s minister of foreign affairs said that his country’s commitment to the European Union military training mission in Mali “continues to be total”, despite the killing in Bamako on Sunday of “a valiant and brave Portuguese army sergeant”.

Augusto Santos Silva, who was representing Portugal in the EU’s foreign affairs council, told journalists that during a debate and adoption of conclusions on the fight against terrorism, he assured his fellow ministers that Portugal remains fully determined to contribute to the EU’s work in the region “with other multilateral organisations, with its partners in North Africa, in the Middle East, in the Horn of Africa and also in the Sahel.”

That, he went on, included the training mission in Mali, despite the “terrorist attack” on the EU mission.
Santos Silva said that other ministers had expressed “solidarity” with Portugal after the incident.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, had earlier expressed her condolences for the death of the Portuguese soldier and a local who was working for the EU delegation, and her “respect, admiration and appreciation” for the work of the EU mission in Mali.

Attack took place at around 4pm local time at the Hotel Le Campement Kangaba on the outskirts of Bamako, an area where members of the mission are authorised to take rest and rehabilitation when not on duty.

Many deads and several others wounded after a suicide car bomb blast at a police station in Somalia’s capital, police said Thursday.

The bomber was trying to drive into the police station’s gate but detonated against the wall instead, Capt. Mohamed Hussein told The Associated Press.

Ambulance sirens echoed across Mogadishu, with dozens of soldiers at the scene.

The blast targeted Waberi district’s police station on the busy Maka Almukarramah road, Col. Ahmed Warsame said.

The Somalia-based al-Shabab extremist group often targets high-profile areas in Mogadishu.

On Tuesday, at least 15 people were killed when a suicide car bomber posing as a milk delivery van detonated at a district headquarters in Mogadishu. Most of the victims were civilians. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility.

The extremist group has vowed to step up attacks after the recently elected government launched a new military offensive against it. The group also faces a new military push from the United States after President Donald Trump approved expanded operations, including airstrikes.

Al-Shabab last year became the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa, with more than 4,200 people killed in 2016, according to the Washington-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies.