Niger’s army said its soldiers killed a leader of the jihadist group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad basin, but experts cast doubt over the unverified claim.
Since Boko Haram’s insurgency to establish an Islamic caliphate in neighbouring northeast Nigeria began in 2009, the conflict has left 40,000 people dead and forced more than two million to flee their homes.
The leader, Bakura, was killed during a “surgical operation” on an island in the Diffa region of southeast Niger last week, where the country borders Nigeria and Chad, an army statement on Thursday read.
He led a splinter group loyal to former Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau that refused to join rival faction the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and moved to the islands on the Niger side of the lake with his fighters.
The Niger army said in its statement that Bakura was targeted by a fighter jet early on August 15, calling him a “feared leader” of the group.
“Very early in the morning of August 15 an air force fighter aircraft launched three targeted and successive strikes on the positions Bakura used to occupy in Shilawa,” it added.
However Nigerien authorities provided no proof of his killing. AFP was unable to verify his death independently.
“I believe that we have to be very very prudent. They’ve already announced the deaths of several jihadist leaders many times and very often those announcements have been contradicted,” said Vincent Foucher, a researcher at France’s CNRS institute specialising in studying Boko Haram.
“At the moment, we only have an announcement from the authorities,” Foucher added.
Along with another expert in west African jihadist groups, who wished to remain anonymous, Foucher said his sources indicated that Bakura was still at large.
– Student kidnappings –
The Boko Haram conflict has moved across Nigeria’s borders, with Niger suffering its first attacks by the group in Bosso, on the shores of Lake Chad in 2015.
At its height in the 2010s, then-leader Abubakar Shekau was claimed dead several times only to reappear again in video footage.
He finally died in 2021, with Bakura taking the reins afterwards.
Bakura, whose real name was given as Ibrahim Mahamadu and said to be aged around 40, originally came from Nigeria, the Niger army said.
According to the military, he was involved in the kidnapping of more than 300 students in Kuriga, Nigeria in March 2024, and helped organise suicide bombings against mosques, markets, public gatherings as well as attacks on the Nigerien, Nigerian and Cameroonian armies.
He joined Boko Haram more than 13 years ago and took over leadership of the group after Shekau’s death during jihadist infighting in May 2021.
Since 2023 Niger has been governed by a military junta which took power in a coup, but has struggled to stem the jihadist violence shaking the country.
As well as in the east, where Boko Haram is at large, the Sahel nation also faces insurgencies by fighters linked to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group in the west, along the borders with Mali and Burkina Faso.
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