31st July, 2019
Islamic State militants have launched attacks on Nigerian troop positions in Baga and Benishiek, in Borno state. However it is unclear the casualties recorded on the Nigerian side.
Even ISWAP was unsure about the damage it claimed it inflicted.
Reuters said ISWAP claimed on its Amaq news agency that it killed or wounded more than 40 soldiers.
The group said militants attacked a military post in Baga and killed at least 15 soldiers before carrying out a second attack on an army barracks in the town of Benisheik, where they killed or wounded around 25 more.
Locals and military sources confirmed there were clashes between insurgents and soldiers in the state on Monday and Tuesday.
At the weekend at least 70 people were killed in three villages in Borno, the birthplace of the insurgency, which began 10 years ago, with a shooting war in Maiduguri, between the insurgents and Boko Haram.
On Tuesday, the Nigerian government restated that it has defeated Boko Haram and it is now faced with a new dimension of the war, ISWAP.
“What we have now is a mixture of remnants of the Boko Haram, fugitive criminals and the Islam in Maghreb together with West African terrorists bonding together. This is a fallout of the collapse of the Libyan State, and from farther away, of the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They are taking advantage of our porous Sahelian borders”, said Garba Shehu, senior special assistant on media to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Shehu acknowledged the new problem posed by ISWAP, as different from the decimated Boko Haram and hoped that the ‘gallant’ Nigerian military and the multinational forces would soon deal with the menace its members constitute.