ISWAP claims killing 10 Nigerian soldiers

Islamic State Thursday claimed it killed 10 Nigeria soldiers in an attack in Borno State on Wednesday.

The insurgents via its Amaq news agency said the troops were killed in an attack on a military post in Gajiram. It also claimed it carted away with six SUVs.

A similar account was also reported by a local news platform Sahara Reporters. The platform on Thursday reported that at least two civilians were killed while some houses were torched.

Sahara Reporters reported that a local vigilante source said terrorists attack the town about 5:00pm, burning part of the Divisional Police Headquarters and a telecommunications mast in the process.

The attack raise questions about Nigerian government assertions that it has defeated the insurgents.

In July, Nigerian government claimed Boko Haram’s 10-year-old insurgency had been “defeated” but admitted that international jihadists posed a growing threat.

“The position of the Nigerian government is that the Boko Haram terrorism has been degraded and defeated,” President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu said in a statement in July.

“The real Boko Haram we know is defeated,” the presidency said.

Shehu said the country was now facing “a mixture” of Boko Haram remnants, criminal groups and jihadists from the Maghreb and West Africa fuelled by turmoil in Libya and the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate in the Middle East.

The over 10 years reign of the Boko Haram has killed more than 30,000 people and displaced about 2 million people.