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Islamic State Says It Killed 18 Soldiers in West Africa 


Borno state, Nigeria
Borno state, Nigeria

Jihadist group Islamic State said Thursday that it had killed 13 Nigerian soldiers and five troops from a west African anti-militant force in attacks over recent days.

Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which split from Nigeria-based Boko Haram in 2016, has carried out a series of attacks in the last few months.

In its newspaper Al-Nabaa, IS said its fighters killed the Nigerians in attacks on a military barracks on Friday, a military post on Sunday, and a town on Monday, all in northeastern Borno state.

Fighters also detonated explosives on Wednesday on a vehicle
in the Lake Chad region, killing five more soldiers, IS said, without specifying the country.

The militants said the vehicle was carrying members of a multinational task force — made up of troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon — set up to fight them.

A Nigerian military spokesman declined to comment, and a spokesman for the task force could not immediately be reached.

Boko Haram has waged a decade-long insurgency in northeast Nigeria that has killed around 30,000 people and forced about 2 million to leave their homes.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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