Nigeria's army said late on Sunday that it rescued 178
people held by Islamist militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria's Borno
state, the heartland of the insurgency.
Spokesman Colonel
Tukur Gusau said in an emailed statement that 101 of the those freed
were children, 67 were women and the rest were men. He added that a Boko
Haram commander had also been captured and several militant camps were
cleared around the town of Bama, about 70 km southeast of the state
capital Maiduguri.
Boko Haram has been waging a six-year
insurgency in the northeast of Africa's biggest economy in an attempt to
establish an Islamist state adhering to strict sharia law.
Nigeria's
airforce also said that it helped ground troops repel an attack by Boko
Haram around the village of Bitta on the southern edge of the Sambisa
forest reserve, a stronghold of the militant group. Bitta is also west
of Gwoza, a town near the Cameroonian border that was believed to be the
militants' headquarters until a major offensive was launched earlier
this year by combined Nigeria, Nigerien and Chadian forces.
Boko
Haram was pushed out of most of the vast swathes of territory it
controlled at the start of the year but they have dispersed and returned
to their guerrilla tactics of hitting soft targets with bombs and
raiding towns.
President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to
crush the group and a multi-national joint taskforce made of 8,700
troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin is being set up in
the Chadian capital N'Djamena to tackle Boko Haram.
The force was supposed to start operations on July 31 but has been dogged by a lack of funding and political will.
Buhari visited Cameroon this past week in an effort to smooth over differences over cross-border pursuit and then to Benin.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/nigeria-s-army-says-rescu/2024672.html
No comments:
Post a Comment