minister on Tuesday insisted that
Boko Haram was "largely defeated"
despite two days of bombings
blamed on the jihadist group that left
dozens dead in the volatile northeast. Lai Mohammed maintained the
Nigerian government had greatly
reduced the group's capacity to
attack and was on its last week. "Boko Haram has been largely
defeated. They (Boko Haram) know
they are on their way out,"
Mohammed told journalists in
Lagos. "They lack the capacity to launch
horrendous attacks they used to do
in the past. We have succeeded in
dislodging them," he said. "Our problem now is how to resettle
the internally displaced people." In the final days before his self-
imposed deadline to stamp out the
group on December 31 expires,
Nigerian President Muhammadu
Buhari said that Boko Haram was
"technically" defeated. Also read: Boko Haram members renounce membership in Borno In an expected show of defiance,
Boko Haram attacked a series of
towns in the north of Africa's most
populous nation and biggest oil
producer, calling into question
Buhari's claim that the militants weren't capable of "conventional"
attacks. On Sunday evening, there was a
spate of suicide bombings in the key
city of Maiduguri, killing 21 people
and injuring scores of others. In the neighbouring state of
Adamawa, 30 people were killed
Monday morning after two young
women detonated explosives in a
crowded market. Over 17,000 people have been killed
in Boko Haram's six-year quest to
create an independent Islamic state
in Nigeria. According to the Global Terrorism
Index, a report released by the New
York-based Institute for Economics
and Peace, Boko Haram "has
become the most deadly terrorist
group in the world". While Nigeria's military has won
back swathes of territory from the
jihadists in recent months, Boko
Haram has expanded its network in
neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and
Niger. The group has increasingly relied on
children as weapons, often
deploying young girls strapped with
explosives into crowded
marketplaces and mosques.
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