West African Nations Team Up to Fight Boko Haram Brief: Thursday Jan 11 2018

Nigerian Troops

Abuja, Nigeria

Soldiers from Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon teamed up to fight the Islamist extremist group, Boko Haram. The soldiers are targeting a Boko Haram faction in the Sambisa forest led by Abubakar Shekau and another faction around Lake Chad led by Mamman Nur. The two locations are located in Borno State in Northeast Nigeria.

Nigerian military spokesman, Brigadier General Sani Usman commented on the operation codenamed, "Operation Deep-Punch 2" stating that there have been making tremendous progress.The operation is aimed at routing the remnants of the terror group in Nigeria's northeast region.

The Nigerian military claimed that 107 insurgents, including the wife of a prominent Boko Haram leader, were reportedly killed in the operation. A further 1050 insurgents surrendered after an intensive air raid and artillery shelling.

The military stated that four soldiers were killed and nine others were wounded by a suicide car bomb attack against a military vehicle near Shekau’s camp on Monday.

Boko Haram has waged a war in striving to form an Islamic state in the Northern part of Nigeria since 2009. The violence has killed at least 20,000 people and displacing more than 2. 5million people.

Previous attempts at degrading and destroying the extremist group has failed and its to be seen if this operation will finally succeed in eradicating this hateful and dangerous group.