Suspected Boko Haram militants have ambushed and killed nine local security volunteers and a farmer in northeastern Nigeria, volunteers and police said on Friday.
The state-funded Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) is composed of locals recruited by the military in Nigeria’s Borno state and trained to help it combat jihadist insurgents.
A group of these vigilantes was reportedly ambushed on Thursday when they responded to the killing of a farmer outside Warabe, in Gwoza district, near the border with Cameroon.
“I personally counted seven bodies belonging to our CJTF members and one farmer,” a senior militia commander in Warabe told AFP of Thursday’s ambush.
“Then this morning, when we searched the bush, we found two more corpses,” he said.
A police officer in Gwoza district confirmed the attack, saying the alleged jihadists killed 10 people.
The reported attacks happened a week after a brigadier general was killed in the region when fighters from Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a rival to Boko Haram, ambushed an army convoy.
He was the highest-ranking military official since 2021 to die in the long-running conflict.
Another CJTF member, Musa Iliya, said Boko Haram militants had ambushed his colleagues and “killed seven”;
“Eight others are missing,” he said.
Warabe lies close to the Mandara Mountains, reputed to be a long-established stronghold for jihadist factions, including ISWAP fighters who operate along the Cameroon border.
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Nigerian National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu, urging Africa’s most populous nation to take steps to curb violence against Christians, the Pentagon said Friday.
Hegseth called on Nigeria to “take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, adding that Washington wants to work with Abuja “to deter and degrade terrorists that threaten the United States.”
The Thursday meeting between Hegseth and Ribadu at the Pentagon came after US President Donald Trump said Christianity was “facing an existential threat” in the west African nation, warning that if Nigeria does not stem the killings, the United States will attack and “it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”
Nigeria, home to 230 million inhabitants, is divided roughly equally between a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north.
It is the scene of numerous conflicts, including jihadist insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.
Clashes are also frequent between mostly Muslim herders and mainly Christian farmers over land and resources, particularly water, giving the conflict an air of religious tensions.
However, experts say the conflict in north-central Nigeria is primarily over land, which is being squeezed by expanding populations and climate change.
