Terrorists Ambush, Kill Nigerian Military Forces on Convoy
By Charles Nwoke
Many Nigerian soldiers on Tuesday died in an ambush on a military convoy in the Lake Chad region by an Islamic terrorist group aligned with the Islamic State group, security sources said.
The convoy was slammed by miscreants from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) outside the northeastern Metele community on Friday, leading to a war where one jihadist was able to detonate a suicide vehicle amid the government troops resulting in many casualties, the sources said.
“We lost several men in the fierce battle with ISWAP terrorists from a vehicle-borne suicide attack,” one of the sources told AFP.
“I can’t give a definite toll but the loss is substantial,” he said.
ISWAP on Sunday accepted responsibility for the pitfall, which it said killed or injured about 20 Nigerian soldiers, according to the SITE Intelligence group that monitors jihadist activities globally.
The military convoy was going to Arege town, close to the boundaries with Niger and Chad, to provide food supplies to troops fighting the terrorists in the area, said the sources, who pleaded anonymity since they were not authorized to speak on the issue.
The convoy was near the fishing town of Baga when it “fell into an ambush” by ISWAP jihadists at around 1400 GMT on Friday, another security source said.
“The soldiers… were getting the upper hand when a suicide bomber set off his explosives-primed vehicles among the soldiers and killed many of them,” the source said.
ISWAP said the explosion also destroyed “two armoured vehicles” and disabled four other vehicles,” according to SITE.
The group also claimed to have seized weapons and ammunition during the attack.
The ISWAP jihadists, who split from the Boko Haram Islamist group in 2016, have since become the dominant insurgency group, focusing mostly on targeting troops and abductions.
In November 2018, ISWAP militants invaded a military base in Metele near the border town with Niger in an attack that left no fewer than 44 soldiers dead, though forces who survived put the death toll at more than 100.
The jihadist violence over the past 14 years has killed around 40,000 people and displaced more than two million in northeast Nigeria.
The conflict has also split into neighbouring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, motivating a regional alliance to combat the hooligans.
The unrest is just one security problem confronting recently sworn-in President Bola Tinubu, who has vowed to make the fight against insecurity one of his priorities.
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