Terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State’s West Africa Province, ISWAP, have launched a deadly attack on a military base in northeastern Nigeria, leaving six soldiers dead.
According to two military officers, the assault occurred in the early hours of Sunday, January 5, when ISWAP fighters stormed the base in Sabon Gari, located in Borno State’s Damboa district.
The attackers arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, setting the base and several army vehicles ablaze.
“We lost six soldiers in the ISWAP terrorists attack on the base after an intense gun battle,” one of the officers disclosed.
Fighter jets from Maiduguri, approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, targeted the retreating attackers.
“Air strikes against the fleeing terrorists resulted in multiple militant fatalities, the destruction of operational vehicles and their weaponry,” another officer added, without providing specific ISWAP casualty figures.
As of Monday afternoon, the military had not issued an official statement confirming the attack or providing updated casualty figures.
Since 2009, jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and ISWAP, along with armed criminal gangs, have wreaked havoc in northern Nigeria. The ongoing insurgency has claimed over 40,000 lives and displaced around two million people in the region.
This attack follows a similar incident in November, where ISWAP militants killed five Nigerian soldiers and injured ten others during a raid on a base in Kareto village near the Niger border.
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