Shekau takes responsibility for rockets attack on Maiduguri

Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād, the Abubakar Shekau-led Boko Haram faction, has claimed responsibility for the Tuesday attack on Maiduguri, Borno State capital, which involved an assault team and volleys of mortars and rockets.

In a five-minute and thirty-two seconds-long video released on Thursday, the group’s leader said an infiltration team carried out the attack.

Shekau also dissociated himself from a farm reportedly belonging to him that was burned by the Nigerian military.

The video showed insurgents armed with AK pattern rifles breaching a section of the trench protecting the city of Maiduguri. One machine gun was also visible during the assault.

Multiple insurgents were involved in the assault on the capital. They had at least one gun truck with what appeared to be a heavy machine gun mounted on it and multiple red motorcycles.

Fabricated rocket and crude launch platform

A Boko Haram crew fired mortars and what looked like fabricated rockets into the city before the video showed the assault team inside the city firing their weapons.

HumAngle had reported the security breach in Maiduguri, which occurred around the Kaleri area, close to the University of Maiduguri, on Tuesday evening.

Boko Haram mortar crew firing indiscriminately into Maiduguri.

The multiple rockets fired randomly into the city centre killed at least 15 people and injured dozens of others across several locations.

This is the first attack of its kind in years, where insurgents came directly into the city during the day to wreak havoc.

There have been several attempts in the past, but those attacks ended at the city’s outskirts.

Nigeria’s military is battling Boko Haram and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), in the Northeast and Lake Chad Basin.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the decade-old insurgency led to the death of over 37,500 people since 2011 and displaced 2.5 million people in the region. [HumAngle]

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