As many as 200 terrorists were killed in a turf war on Sunday between rival jihadists in North-East Nigeria.
The fighting between Boko Haram and rival militants from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has spilled over into Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Chad, and Cameroon.
Lake river corridors serve as operational zones for jihadists who also place revenues from tax collectors, timber.
The violent episode is the latest in a fight between groups for territory and influence in several inactive states that have a claim for dominance over a larger region. According to reports, Iswap is reported to have sustained additional losses of personnel and several boats used in the attack were captured by Boko Haram forces.
“From the toll we got, about 200 terrorists were killed in the fight,” Babakura Kolo, a member of a Vigilante group working in Nigeria.
“We know the fight is good news to us,” AFP also quoted a Nigerian intelligence source as saying. The source added that the casualty total was “more than 150”.
Iswap started as a splinter group from Boko Haram affiliated with. Since the split in 2016, both factions have been supported regularly, mainly in the Lake Chad Basin Basin area. Other groups have since split off from Boko Haram, spreading to other parts of Northern Nigeria.
The lake has lost more than 90% of its surface area since 1960, according to the UN’s UN program. As the water recedes, new land routes across the territory open up.
By many analyst accounts, Igwap has long been considered the stronger and more profitable of the two factions, but Boko Haram is seen as successful in the fight in the Lake Chad area. Sunday’s clash was possibly the deadliest of them all.
In May 2021, IsWAP launched an offensive in Sambisa, the forest enclaves that have long been the base of Boko Haram Haram Haram, and where it continues to take students. It is believed that Abubakar Shekau, the ravaged leader of Boko Haram, killed himself during the fighting in Iswap in Sambisa.
Between December 2022 and January 2023, Boko Haram also launched large-scale attacks on two bases in the state of birth, the birthplace of the group’s radical ideology. Caches of weapons were seized with more than 100 fighters killed and 35 others wounded, according to reports in local newspapers The Guardian Nigeria and Punch.
After the extrajudicial killing of Shekau’s predecessor, Mohammed Yusuf, in 2009, a jihadist conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced about 2 million in Nigeria’s north-east.