Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau who oversaw kidnap of 300 girls is seriously injured after trying to kill himself to avoid capture by rival ISIS jihadists
- Abubakar Shekau was fighting Islamic State West Africa militants on Wednesday
- Two intelligence sources said he had attempted to kill himself to avoid capture
- The sources offer differing reports as to how exactly Shekau, 48, became injured
- One said he shot himself in the chest after being surrounded in a forest
- The other said he detonated explosives while in a home he was holed up in
- ISWAP and Boko Haram have been fighting for dominance in northern Nigeria
- Shekau has been reported dead several times over the last decade
The leader of Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has been seriously injured after trying to kill himself to avoid capture by rival jihadists, two intelligence sources said.
Abubakar Shekau was fighting ISIS-aligned militants from the Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) in northern Nigeria when he was injured on Wednesday, the sources told AFP news agency today.
The fighting occurred in Borno state, where ISWAP has become the dominant force in Nigeria’s more than a decade-long jihadist insurgency.
Shekau, who made international headlines when his men kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, has been reported dead several times since Boko Haram first launched its insurrection in 2009.
The intelligence sources offered differing reports on how he became injured.
The leader of Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has been seriously injured after trying to kill himself to avoid capture by rival jihadists, two intelligence sources said
Abubakar Shekau was fighting ISIS-aligned militants from the Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) in northern Nigeria when he was injured on Wednesday, the sources told AFP news agency today
One said that, after a series of clashes, he and some of his fighters were surrounded by ISWAP jihadists in Boko Haram’s Sambisa forest stronghold, where they demanded he surrender.
‘To avoid capture, Shekau shot himself in the chest and the bullet pierced his shoulder,’ the source said, adding: ‘He was badly injured.’
Some of his men managed to escape with him to an unknown destination, the source added.
The second intelligence source told AFP that Shekau, 48, was critically wounded after detonating explosives in the house where he was holed up with his men.
‘We are investigating,’ Nigeria’s army spokesman Mohammed Yerima told AFP by text, asked about those reports.
Shekau’s critical injury or death would be a blow to his Boko Haram faction which has already been weakened by military air strikes on its bases and defections among his men.
More than 40,000 people have been killed and over two million displaced from their homes by the conflict in northeast Nigeria, and fighting has spread to parts of neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
Boko Haram and ISWAP have fought battles for control of territory in the past.
Shekau, who made international headlines when his men kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, has been reported dead several times since Boko Haram first launched its insurrection in 2009
ISWAP has emerged as the stronger force, carrying out complex attacks on the military and overrunning army bases.
Shekau took over Boko Haram, formally known as the Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, after its founder Muhammad Yusuf was killed by police in 2009.
Under Shekau’s leadership, Boko Haram turned large swathes of the northeast into a no-go territory, proclaiming a ‘caliphate’ in the Borno town of Gwoza in 2014.
An offensive since 2015 by Nigerian troops backed by soldiers from Cameroon, Chad and Niger drove jihadists from most of the area that they had once controlled.
Angered by Shekau’s indiscriminate targeting of civilians and use of women and children suicide bombers, a rival faction broke away in 2016 to become ISWAP with the backing of the Islamic State group.
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