Nigerian Army rescues 211 captives held by Boko Haram

Chief of Army Staff, Maj.-Gen. Tukur Buratai

The Nigerian Army has rescued 211 civilians held captive by the Boko Haram terrorists at Cingal Murye and Maja villages in Northern Borno on Saturday.

Brig.-Gen. Sani Usman, the Director Army Public Relations, said in a statement on Sunday that troops of 22 Brigade Garrison, Operation Lafiya Dole, rescued the victims during an operation in the villages.

The Nigerian Army said that one terrorist was neutralised while 11 bicycles were recovered from the fleeing terrorists.

“In addition, the patrol team escorted two heavy duty trucks and 18 pickup vans to recover Internally Displaced Persons’ food stuff from Mala Maja,” the Nigerian Army added.

Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon.

The group was led by Abubakar Shekau until August 2016, when he was succeeded by Abu Musab al-Barnawi.

The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but in March 2015, it announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Since the current insurgency started in 2009, it has killed 20,000 and displaced 2.3 million from their homes and was ranked as the world’s deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015.

After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram’s increasing radicalization led to a violent uprising in July 2009 in which its leader was summarily executed.

Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, and progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.

The government’s establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.