Boko Haram Islamists Killed in Airstrikes in Nigeria
Murad Makhmudov and Noriko Watanabe
Modern Tokyo Times
Nigeria continues to grapple with Islamist terrorism and ethnically driven violence, often intertwined with anti-Christian sentiment.
In this context, reports of Nigerian airstrikes killing approximately 35 Islamist militants near the Cameroon border were likely welcomed both domestically and across the region. However, if history is any guide, such victories are often short-lived — and the bloodshed in Nigeria is likely to persist at a high level.
The BBC reports, “On Saturday, a group of prominent Nigerians, including ex-government ministers, business persons and civil society activists, issued a statement, raising concern that parts of Nigeria were enduring ‘war-time levels of slaughter,’ while the country was officially at peace.”
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) is conducting airstrikes to weaken Islamist positions, while ground troops focus on confronting insurgents in the country’s northeast.
The NAF said: “Acting on multiple intelligence from several sources, the Air Component executed precision strikes in successive passes, engaging the terrorists and neutralising more than 35 fighters at four identified assembly areas.”
Lee Jay Walker (Modern Tokyo Times analyst) says, “Cameroon, Chad, and Niger continue to feel the impact of Islamist unrest spilling over from northeastern Nigeria. The violence involves both Boko Haram and its takfiri rivals, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).”
Christians in Nigeria continue to face deadly attacks from a range of Islamic forces — including terrorist groups and ethnically driven violence by Fulani militants specifically targeting Christian communities. The only grim consistency is the recurrence of fresh massacres. Yet, the international media often downplays the crisis, frequently omitting its anti-Christian dimension.
Christian Solidarity International reports, “Since 2016, Islamist-inspired Fulani militias have stepped up their brutal attacks across swathes of central and southern Nigeria, laying waste to mainly Christian villages, killing the villagers or driving them from their ancestral homes. It is a campaign that is increasingly taking on the character of ethnic cleansing.”
Pope Leo XIV is concerned about the embattled “rural Christian communities of the Benue State, who have been relentless victims of violence.”
Vatican News reports, “Christians risk their lives not only at the hands of Boko Haram, but also of ethnic Fulani Muslim herders who have joined Islamist extremist groups… The attacks have led to mass forcible displacement. About 5 million Christians have been displaced and forced into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps within Nigeria and refugee camps at regional and sub-regional borders…”
Overall, Nigeria’s armed forces are battling Islamist insurgent groups in the northeast, while also contending with ethnically driven massacres—often marked by religious targeting of Christian communities—in other regions of the country.
Simultaneously, widespread political and institutional corruption continues to undermine governance and stability across the nation.
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