MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Nov. 17 (UPI) — The Nigerian military said Monday it arrested nine Boko Haram suspects, including a top commander, who were allegedly planning to conduct attacks in Maiduguri, capital of the country’s northeastern Borno state.
A Nigerian military statement said the suspects infiltrated the city riding Toyota Hilux trucks, armed with AK-47s and in possession of at least 20 improvised explosive devices that were “meant to be detonated at some selected targets in the city.”
The statement said troops also discovered a bomb- and rocket-making facility in the town of Bama, also in Borno state.
Punch quoted a statement by Col. Tukur Gusau, army spokesman for “Operation Lafiya Dole,” as saying the plot was foiled after Nigerian troops arrested and interrogated a man identified as John Trankil, a suspected Boko Haram commander.
Col. Sami Usman told Punch the name could be an alias and that the suspects’ real identities would be revealed as further investigations are made.
The arrests come two days after Usman announced the arrest of a suspected Boko Haram militant who was No. 26 on a recently distributed 100 most-wanted list. Authorities apprehended Danladi Abdullahi in Maiduguri, where a multitude of Boko Haram attacks have occurred.
Late last month, a suicide bombing at a mosque in the city killed 18 people and wounded dozens of others, one week after similar attacks in Maiduguri killed more than 40 people.
Borno state is the birthplace of Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group that has since 2009 killed more than 17,000 people in a campaign of suicide bombings, mass kidnappings, executions and assaults on remote villages and military bases mainly in northeastern Nigeria but also in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The groups seeks the formation of an Islamic government in the region.
On Tuesday the Cameroonian military told Xinhua news agency it captured 19 suspected Boko Haram militants during air and ground operations in the country’s Far North Region, which borders Borno state.
Throughout the summer and fall, Cameroon has absorbed a series of suicide bombings in its north. Along with Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Benin, it is a member of an international task force created earlier this year to fight Boko Haram.
In March, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, a terrorist group holding territory in Iraq and Syria. Britain’s Institute for Economics and Peacereleased a report Tuesday indicating 32,658 people were killed in worldwide terrorism in 2014, a rise of 80 percent from the previous year.
The report showed killings by Boko Haram and IS accounted for more than half that number.
