Nigerian army lands crushing blow on Boko Haram: President

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari says government troops have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group by capturing the group’s last stronghold in the country’s northeast.

“I was told by the Chief of Army Staff that the camp fell at about 1:35 p.m. [local time] on Friday, December 23, and that the terrorists are on the run, and no longer have a place to hide,” Buhari said in a statement on Saturday, calling on the army to “maintain the tempo by pursuing them and bringing them to justice.”

Buhari added that the army troops managed to crush the remnants of Boko Haram at “Camp Zero”, located deep inside the thick Sambisa Forest in the volatile Borno State, without mentioning the whereabouts of the group’s ringleader Abubakar Shekau.  

According to the Nigerian president, Friday’s victory marked the “final crushing” of the Takfiri group. 

The triumph was achieved after the army gradually tightened the noose around terrorists in the forest through a months-long counter-terrorism military campaign that was intensified in the last few weeks, covering some 13,00 square kilometers of the forest in an attempt to curb the group’s atrocities against civilians and clear the area of its presence.

SS