The Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) — a regional coalition of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger to combat Boko Haram — killed Ammar bin Umar, one of the Islamist organization's chief commanders.
According to military sources consulted by the Nigerian daily Vanguard, Bin Umar died as a result of an air operation in the Lake Chad area carried out last Friday and led by Super Tucano planes of the Nigerian Air Force.
The anti-jihadist military mission has killed more than a hundred terrorists from the Boko Haram group and its faction, the Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP), military sources reported.
In a statement released late this Sunday in Nigeria, Colonel Muhammad Dole, spokesman for this operation, explained that the joint military force carried out air raids on jihadists' hiding places in the area and that the casualties include commanders of these terrorist groups.
“In the period of this operation, more than a hundred terrorists have been neutralized, including more than 10 senior commanders, following lethal air strikes on the islands of Lake Chad led by intelligence (operations) by the coordinated Air Forces,” the spokesman specified.
Dole did not specify when the operations took place, but did indicate that the dead commanders included terrorists Dan Buduma, Abubakar Shuwa and Abu Ali.
In addition, he confirmed that 3 soldiers and one volunteer civilian were killed during the operation and 18 were injured due to explosive devices placed by terrorists during their escape.
The military spokesman also specified that, in the course of these operations, “a significant number of innocent citizens, most of them women and children captured by criminals, were rescued.”
The joint military force also confiscated or destroyed numerous “sophisticated weapons”, such as large-caliber weapons, and vehicles that were in the hands of terrorists.
Since 2009, northeastern Nigeria has been the battleground of the jihadist group Boko Haram and its faction since 2015, the Islamic State in the Province of West Africa.
Both groups have killed more than 35,000 people and caused some 2.7 million internally displaced persons, mostly in Nigeria, but also in neighbouring countries such as Cameroon, Chad and Niger, according to government and UN data.
(With information from EFE)
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