Niger Army Kills Boko Haram Leader In Lake Chad Operation

Oluwasegun SanusiAugust 22, 20251 Mins read27

The Nigerien army announced Thursday that it has killed a senior Boko Haram commander, dealing a significant blow to the jihadist group’s operations in the Lake Chad basin.

According to a military statement, Ibrahim Mahamadu, widely known as Bakura, was killed during a precision airstrike carried out on August 15. The strike targeted the insurgent leader’s hideout on Shilawa, an island in the Diffa region near the borders of Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.

Very early in the morning of August 15, an air force fighter aircraft launched three targeted and successive strikes on the positions Bakura used to occupy in Shilawa,” the army said, describing him as a “feared leader” of the group.

Bakura, believed to be around 40 years old and originally from Nigeria, had been active with Boko Haram for over 13 years. Following the death of Abubakar Shekau in 2021 during clashes with rival jihadists, Bakura assumed leadership of a splinter faction loyal to Shekau.

Unlike other commanders who aligned with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Bakura refused to pledge allegiance to the group and relocated his fighters to the Nigerien side of Lake Chad.

Boko Haram’s insurgency began in northeast Nigeria in 2009, with the group seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate. The conflict has since spread across borders, leaving more than 40,000 people dead and displacing over two million across the region. Niger first came under attack in 2015, when militants launched raids in Bosso, a town on the lake’s shores.

Recently, governments in the Chad Basin region made pledges to crack down on Islamist terrorism, with two high-profile arrests announced in August.

On Monday, the Chadian army announced that it had arrested Muslim Mohammed Yusuf, the 18-year-old son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf.

This was followed by Nigeria’s national security advisor, Nuhu Ribadu, announcing the arrest of leaders of the two terrorist groups, Ansaru and Mahmuda. The two leaders are credited with a 2022 Kuje prison attack that led to the escape of dozens of jailed Boko Haram members and an attack on the Niger uranium facility in 2013.