Nigeria’s Military Raids Boko Haram Camps, Kill Over 30 Terrorists And Free 338 Captives — Mostly Females And Children

Nigeria’s military conducted daring raids on Boko Haram camps and claim to have killed over 30 terrorists. The commandos also freed about 338 people held captive by the terrorist faction.

Nigerian military troops belonging to the 28 Task Force Brigade Nigerian Army, deployed at Bitta and Pridang, conducted raids on Boko Haram camps. Reports indicate the soldiers killed approximately 30 terrorists near the Bulajilin and Manawashe villages along Bita and Damboa road at the fringes of Sambisa forest on Tuesday. Apart from killing members of the group, the army rescued 338 people, mostly women and children, who were being held in inhumane conditions.

Confirming the raids, Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters added that in a similar mission, troops managed to ambush and kill four suspects who were about to embark on a bombing mission in the northeastern Adamawa state. Though the military managed to rescue more than 300 prisoners, they were unable to find a single girl of the 219 kidnapped from a school in Chibok. Though 50 of the girls had managed to escape the clutches of Boko Haram, they couldn’t remember where they were held and stated that the terrorist group would often relocate them, sometimes in the dead of the night.

The kidnapping and the subsequent evidence that some of the girls were used as suicide bombers sparked an international outrage that exposed the military and government’s failures. The local administration was blamed to have failed in fighting the six-year-old uprising that had left about 20,000 people dead and displaced over two million, according to Amnesty International and the United Nations.

Incidentally, former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari managed to take control of the region from President Goodluck Jonathan by ridiculing the latter’s inability to find the kidnapped girls and blaming the administration of rampant corruption responsible for the country’s current predicament. Buhari has vowed to halt the atrocities committed by Boko Haram by December. But the terrorist faction responded with multiple suicide bombings and acts of terror in northern, northeastern, and central Nigeria, as well as in the neighboring countries of Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, reported the Guardian.

Boko Haram has been targeting crowded places, such as mosques and markets, and they have been forcing women and children to wear bombs. Though technically suicide bombing missions, the Boko Haram operatives have been known to remotely detonate the bombs that were forcibly strapped on innocent victims, which the group had abducted over the last several months.

Though the administration hasn’t begun the process of identifying the captives, experts suggest the group might have been hoarding them to be used as suicide bombers. Terrorist group like ISIS, which Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to, has been known to trade women as sex slaves and harvest organs to be illegally traded. Perhaps the high number of people being held may have served a similar purpose.

Nigeria indicated that of the 338 prisoners Boko Haram’s camps held, eight were men, 138 were women, and the rest were children. All the captives have been moved to Mubi, confirmed the military. Besides the prisoners, the military also seized a small cache of arms and ammunition which included two AK-47 rifles, one General Purpose Machine Gun, and two Dane Guns, as well as 150 rounds of 7.62mm (NATO), six boxes of 7.62mm (NATO), and three cutlasses, reported the News (Nigeria). The troops also recovered approximately N153,385k or about $770,000 in cash.

The Defence Headquarters, which planned the raids that interestingly coincided with the Chief of Army Staff’s operational visit to the Brigade Headquarters in Mubi, claimed that they have been steadily weakening Boko Haram and degrading their capabilities.

[Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei / Getty Images]