ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — The Nigerian army said Sunday it killed a top commander of Boko Haram and 10 members of the Islamic extremist group in a night raid in the northeastern part of the country.
Abu Khalid, a commander of Boko Haram in the Sambisa Forest in Borno state, was a key figure within "the terrorist hierarchy, coordinating operations and logistics in the Sambisa axis,” army spokesman Sani Uba said in a statement.
The soldiers attacked the Boko
Haram militants on Saturday night in the Kodunga area of Borno state, Uba said, adding that weapons, food items and medical supplies were recovered from the militants.
The announcement comes after Boko Haram militants killed dozens of people in two separate attacks on a construction site and military base in the northeastern state earlier this week.
Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law.
The insurgency now includes an offshoot of the Islamic State group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP. It has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors, including Niger, killing about 35,000 civilians and displacing more than 2 million people, according to the United Nations.
Taiwo Adebayo, a researcher specializing in Boko Haram at the Institute for Security Studies, said the army began an offensive last month, proactively moving into hideouts to engage the insurgents. It marked “a departure from the usual reactive posture that saw the military suffer dozens of raids on their camps last year.”
He said the United States has conducted intelligence-gathering flights over Borno since last November, helping the Nigerian military carry out raids on armed groups.
Nigeria is in the grip of a complex security crisis, with an insurgency by Islamic militants in the northeast alongside a surge in kidnappings for ransom by gunmen across the northwest and north-central regions over the recent months,
In December, the U.S. launched airstrikes in northern Nigeria, targeting Islamic State fighters, after allegations that the West African country failed to rein in attacks on Christians.
