ISIS-Boko Haram Members Exposed in Benue

DSS said it busted the ISIS-linked Boko Haram members based in Benue State and the Federal Capital Territory who had perfected plans to attack the United Kingdom and American embassies as well as other western interests in Abuja.

The Department of State Services (DSS) said it had busted a ring of ISIS-linked Boko Haram members based in
Benue and the FCT between March 25 and 26.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined to comment on the arrests.

The Boko Haram campaign is now in its eighth year with little sign of ending, having claimed more than 20,000 lives.

At least 117 suicide attacks have been carried out by young people in the Lake Chad basin region since 2014, with almost 80% of the bombs strapped to girls, a new report says.

It’s been almost three years since Boko Haram abducted more than 250 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in northern Nigeria, sparking a global outcry and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

Since 2014, 117 children – more than 80 per cent of them girls – have been used in “suicide” attacks across the region.

Nigeria’s national security agency say Islamic extremist group Boko Haram were behind the proposed attack. Previous year 21 of them were released after negotiations brokered by the Swiss government and the International Red Cross.

Twenty-one Chibok girls were released in October in a deal brokered by Switzerland and the International Red Cross, while a handful of others have escaped or been rescued.

Unicef is also concerned that children are being held by the Nigerian military for alleged association with fighters from Boko Haram.

The group has increasingly been using children to attack crowded markets, mosques and camps for internally displaced people in northeast Nigeria and the broader Lake Chad region. “In some cases, parents are killed in front of the girls during the process”, it said.

“Boko Haram continues to abduct women, girls and young men who are often then subjected to horrific abuses, including rape, beatings and being forced into suicide bombing missions”, said Makmid Kamara, Amnesty International’s interim country director for Nigeria.

“Many children who have been associated with armed groups keep their experience secret because they fear the stigmatization and even violent reprisals from their community”, the report noted.

He said that the suspect confessed his involvement in the execution of sinister activities of the group.

“A primary focus for [U.S.] Africa Command [AFRICOM] in West Africa is containing and degrading Boko Haram and its offshoot since a year ago, ISIS-West Africa”, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the top American commander in the region, told lawmakers last month.