Nigeria military says Boko Haram leader ‘fatally wounded’ in airstrike

Nigeria’s military said Tuesday that it believes an airstrike has “fatally wounded” Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau but that there was no way to confirm yet another claim of the death of Nigeria’s Islamic extremist leader.

A statement from the military does not say how officials got the information but identifies other commanders as “confirmed dead” in an air raid Friday.

Nigerian security forces have at least three times in the past declared that they have killed or fatally wounded Shekau, only to have him resurface in video and audio recordings. The military has said that Boko Haram was using look-alike fighters to impersonate the supposedly dead leader.

The strikes came in “the most unprecedented and spectacular air raid” carried out by the Nigerian air force while Shekau was praying on Friday, Islam’s holy day, at Taye village in the extremists’ Sambisa Forest holdout in northeastern Nigeria, according to the statement signed by army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.

“Those Boko Haram terrorist commanders confirmed dead include Abubakar Mubi, Malam Nuhu and Malam Hamman, amongst others. While their leader, so-called ‘Abubakar Shekau,’ is believed to be fatally wounded on his shoulders. Several other terrorists were also wounded,” the statement said.

The statement comes as U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry is to meet in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, with President Muhammadu Buhari, on a visit to discuss Islamic extremism and regional security. Kerry, speaking Tuesday morning in the northern city of Sokoto, made no reference to the army’s report.

Shekau started the insurgency in 2009 that has killed 20,000 people, driven more than 2.2 million from their homes and spread across Nigeria’s borders. It has been marked by deadly attacks and suicide bombings at schools, mosques and marketplaces and mass abductions including nearly 300 schoolgirls taken from a remote school in the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014. Dozens escaped, but 218 remain missing.

A recent video showing dozens of the girls said that Shekau is willing to negotiate a prisoner swap for detained Boko Haram commanders. Buhari is under increasing pressure to rescue or negotiate the girls’ release, but his spokesman has said officials are wary after previous negotiations failed because officials were duped into talks with the wrong people.

Boko Haram appears to be fractured by a leadership struggle as the militant group Islamic State announced that it had a new leader. Shekau has insisted he is still in charge. He had pledged the group’s allegiance to Islamic State last year, giving the latter its first franchise in sub-Saharan Africa.

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