30 Boko Haram Troops Killed in Ambush of Nigerian Government Convoy

By Ed Adamczyk, UPI

    Nigerian troops accompanying a convoy near Bama, Nigeria, killed 30 suspected Boko Haram
    members when the convoy was ambushed Sunday. Photo courtesy of National Emergency
    Management Agency Nigeria

BAMA , Nigeria, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Thirty suspected Boko Haram militants died when the Nigerian army repelled an ambush of traveling government members near Bama, a local official said.

"We were traveling from Pulka to Maiduguri when militants attacked our convoy with improvised explosive devices and sporadic gunshots, just after [passing the village of] Ngurosoye, but the troops repelled them, killing up to 30 of the terrorists," said Saeed Salisu, chairmen of the government of Gwoza, in northeastern Borno state.

Nigerian troops escorting the convoy Sunday returned fire. No government officials were injured, but several soldiers were treated for injuries at a nearby barracks hospital.

The insurgent group has perfected a new tactic of waiting to ambush convoys. At least two senior officers were killed in the past two months, including Lt. Col. Mohammed Abu-Ali, a commanding officer in the army's counter-terrorism unit, the Nigerian newspaper the Guardian reported Monday.

Not sure 'perfected' is the right word here. But it's good to see that the soldiers were adequately armed to be able to withstand an attack and repel it.

Analysts blame the country's dry season, improving Boko Haram's mobility, and the Nigerian army's inadequate military equipment, for failing to finally defeat the weakened insurgent movement, Turkey's Anadolu Agency said.

Corruption Creeping Back into Nigerian Military Gives Power to Boko Haram

83 Nigerian soldiers missing after Boko Haram attack

By Ed Adamczyk  


Nigerian army members with refugees from Boko Haram. Sources said 83 Nigerian soldiers remain missing after an attack on their installation in the village of Gashigar in Borno state. Photo courtesy of Nigerian Army/Facebook

GASHIGAR , Nigeria, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Eighty-three Nigerian soldiers are missing six days after a battle with Boko Haram forces, military sources said.

The soldiers remain unaccounted for after the Islamist insurgents attacked their base at Gashigar in Nigeria's Borno state. The Nigerian army confirmed the attack last week but has not offered updates nor mentioned the missing soldiers. The Nigerian newspaper Pulse, citing a story in the Premium Times, said top military sources confirmed the soldiers were missing.

The sources suggested the soldiers may have drowned in the Yobe River while fleeing the attack. About 22 soldiers were rescued from the river by Niger's army and are recovering in a Diffa, Niger, hospital, they said, but others were shot and killed as they attempted to escape in the river. 

Corruption - Soldiers unpaid, fed 1 meal per day

The sources added poor morale, brought on by unpaid salaries and only one meal per day, is affecting the Nigerian army as it seeks to control the insurgent group; they suggested commanding officers are skimming the daily pay and rations for their own benefit, a practice common during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan but allegedly changed by President Muhammudu Buhari.

President Buhari, your country is slipping back into its former ways of world-class corruption. It's time to clean house again. You do not want to be compared with Goodluck Jonathon.

A renewed show of strength by Boko Haram comes after several months of the Nigerian army's claims that it is winning the battle against the insurgents, and that combat operations will soon slow. The army announced Saturday that 21 people were arrested for livestock rustling, a common means in Borno state of funding Boko Haram.

    Gashigar is north of Maiduguri along the Niger border

Teen Girl Sent by Boko Haram Rips Off Suicide Vest, Refuses to Bomb Refugee Camp

Girl was among thousands held captive for months by extremist group, local government official says

The Associated Press 

Rescue workers transport a victim of a Boko Haram suicide bomb attack at a refugee camp in Nigeria earlier this week.
One teenage girl sent by the extremist group to attack the camp ripped off her suicide vest and ran away.
(Jossy Ola/Associated Press)

Strapped with a booby-trapped vest and sent by the extremist Boko Haram group to kill as many people as possible, a young teenage girl tore off the explosives and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers.

Her two companions, however, completed their grisly mission earlier this week and walked into a crowd of hundreds at Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria and blew themselves up, killing 58 people.

Later found by local self-defence forces, the girl's tearful account is one of the first indications that at least some of the child bombers used by Boko Haram are aware that they are about to die and kill others.

"She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people. But she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who brought her to the camp," said Modu Awami, a self-defence fighter who helped question the girl.

She was among thousands held captive for months by the extremists, according to Algoni Lawan, a spokesman for the Ngala local government area that has many residents at the camp and who is privy to information about her interrogation by security forces.

"She confessed to our security operatives that she was worried if she went ahead and carried out the attack that she might kill her own father, who she knew was in the camp," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The girl tried to persuade her companions to abandon the mission, he said, "but she said she could not convince the two others to change their minds."

Her story was corroborated when she led soldiers to the unexploded vest, Awami said Thursday, speaking by phone from the refugee camp, which holds 50,000 people who have fled Boko Haram's Islamic uprising.

Captives turned into weapons

The girl is in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings that has helped them increase security at the camp, said Satomi Ahmed, chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.

The United States on Thursday strongly condemned the bombings. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. remains committed to assisting those afflicted by the conflict and supports efforts to provide greater protection for civilians and the regional fight against terrorism.

Boko Haram's six-year-old Islamic insurgency has killed 20,000 people, made 2.5 million homeless and spread across Nigeria's borders.

The extremists have kidnapped thousands of people and the increasing number of suicide bombings by girls and children have raised fears they are turning some captives into weapons. An army bomb disposal expert has told the AP that some suicide bombs are detonated remotely, so the carriers may not have control over when the bomb goes off.

The latest atrocity blamed on Boko Haram extremists was committed against people who had been driven from their homes by the insurgents and had spent a year across the border in Cameroon.

Some 12,000 of them had only returned to Nigeria in January when soldiers declared the area safe. The scene of the killings is 50 kilometres from the border with Cameroon and 85 kilometres northeast of Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast and birthplace of Boko Haram.

Such attacks make it difficult for the government to persuade people to return home. The extremists have also razed homes and businesses, destroyed wells and boreholes and stolen livestock and seed grains that farmers need to start their life again.