Kano
\nAt least seven Nigerian soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram jihadist attack on a military base near the Niger border, the military said here.<\/p>\n
The Islamists and the army were engaged in a fierce battle on Monday in Metele, a village in Nigeria\u2019s northeast Borno State, the military said in a statement posted on Twitter Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Seven soldiers died and 16 were wounded \u201cin action\u201d the army said, but military and civilian militia sources put the death toll higher.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost 18 men in the fight which lasted for seven hours,\u201d a military officer told AFP, speaking from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur men fought hard and dealt heavy blows on the terrorists but they were overwhelmed by the enemy who overran the base,\u201d said the officer who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak on the incident.<\/p>\n
A civilian militia assisting the military in fighting the jihadists said that on Tuesday 18 bodies of soldiers were brought to the garrison town of Monguno, 120 kilometres from the attacked base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fighting was fierce. It started around 4:30 pm and continued till 11:30 pm,\u201d the militia man said.<\/p>\n
Boko Haram suffered \u201cheavy\u201d casualties but managed to invade the base and take weapons, he said, adding that the jihadists destroyed \u201cthose they could not take away.\u201d Boko Haram\u2019s Islamic State group-backed faction known as Islamic State West Africa Province operates in the Lake Chad region and has in recent months intensified attacks on military bases in Borno and nearby Yobe states.<\/p>\n
The attacks are seen as a sign of a hardline takeover in ISWAP by more radical lieutenants who executed the group\u2019s de facto leader over his willingness to hold peace talks with the Nigerian government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kano At least seven Nigerian soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram jihadist attack on a military base near the Niger border, the military said here. The Islamists and the army were engaged in a fierce battle on Monday in Metele, a village in Nigeria\u2019s northeast Borno State, the military said in a statement posted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44285,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44283\/revisions\/44285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}