Nigeria’s airforce said it had killed more than 35 jihadists in raids Saturday on militant fighters that had gathered near the Nigeria–Cameroon border following an attempted attack on ground troops.
The air strike was the latest by the Nigerian military, which is battling a resurgence of attacks in the country’s embattled northeast.
The region faces frequent attacks from the jihadist fighters of Boko Haram and its rival splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
“Acting on multiple intelligence from several sources, the Air Component executed precision strikes in successive passes, engaging the terrorists and neutralising more than 35 fighters at four identified assembly areas,” said a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) statement.
They had re-established communication with the ground troops that had been threatened and they confirmed that the “situation around their location had been stabilised”, the statement added.
Both ISWAP and Boko Haram have recently ramped up their assaults on the military in northeast Nigeria where they have also overrun military bases, killing soldiers and seizing weapons.
The strike had “intensified efforts” to dominate the battle field and “deny terrorists freedom of action”, said the statement.
While Nigeria’s 16-year-old insurgency has slowed since violence peaked around 2015, attacks have picked up since the beginning of the year.
The airforce said the latest operation demonstrated the force’s commitment to providing close air support to ground forces, “while also disrupting terrorist logistics and movement corridors along the north east border regions”.
The northeast region which neighbours Cameroon, Chad and Niger, has been the site of frequent attacks from the jihadist fighters of Boko Haram and ISWAP.
A claim this week by the military in neighbouring Niger that it had killed Boko Haram leader in a targeted airstrike in the Lake Chad basin, was on Friday dismissed by a close aide to the head of jihadist group.
– Possible US arms sale –
The insurgency has killed more than 40,000 civilians and forced more than two million people to flee their homes, according to the UN.
Last week the US State Department approved the sale of $346 million in weapons, including bombs, rockets and munitions, to Nigeria, subject to Congressional approval.
The weapons would “improve Nigeria’s capability to meet current and future threats through operations against terrorist organizations”, it said.
The army there is battling not just the jihadist militants in the northeast, but also armed “bandit” gangs in the northwest.
In recent years, civilians have been caught in the crossfire and killed in air strikes in Nigeria, though the authorities sometimes dispute hitting civilians.
The US State Department’s own annual rights report on Nigeria, released the same week it approved the weapons sale, warned of air strikes killing civilians and torture of detainees.
A US embassy spokesperson told AFP that senior officials in Washington and the embassy in Nigeria “regularly engage with the Nigerian government at the highest levels to protect civilians from harm and to ensure investigations into civilian casualty incidents and allegations of human rights violations are conducted transparently and to press for accountability”.
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