Nigerian military kills 30 suspected terrorists in airstrikes

ABUJA, Nigeria | Xinhua | At least 30 suspected terrorists were killed recently when the Nigerian military launched a series of airstrikes on their hideouts in the country’s northern region, the air force said Wednesday.

The airstrikes targeted the hideouts of the suspected terrorists in the northern states of Borno and Katsina on Monday, following credible intelligence, Edward Gabkwet, the spokesman for the air force, said in a statement Wednesday.

Several terrorists from the camp of Babura, a known terrorist commander in the Kankara local government area of the northwestern state of Katsina, were killed in one of the airstrikes, according to the statement. Babura narrowly escaped being killed, unlike several of his foot soldiers, it said.

The raid on the Tumbun Fulani, a settlement near Lake Chad, which shares a border with the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, also recorded a “remarkable success,” the air force said.

The suspected terrorists in that area had regrouped at a once-abandoned hideout but were decimated by the airstrike after intelligence surveillance, it added. ■