The Nigerian military said a man who appeared in recent videos by the Boko Haram group as Abubakar Shekau, its leader, was killed in a battle last week.
Troops fighting off repeated attempts by the Islamist militants to take the northeastern town of Konduga attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying top commanders, killing a number of them on Sept. 17, Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters said today in an e-mailed statement.
Among the dead was “one Mohammed Bashir who has been acting or posing on videos as the deceased Abubakar Shekau, the eccentric character known as leader of the group,” the army said in the statement.
Though the army said last year it had killed Shekau, it never provided any proof. Shekau appeared in videos after to disprove the military’s claims, prompting allegations by security agencies an impostor was at work.
Boko Haram, which has been battling the Nigerian state since 2009, killed more than 2,000 people in the first half of this year in an escalating campaign of bomb and gun attacks, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch. More than 350,000 people in the northeastern states where the violence is fiercest have fled their homes this year, according to the National Emergency Management Agency.
At least 135 Islamists surrendered to troops yesterday in the northeastern town of Biu and they are being interrogated, the army said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elisha Bala-Gbogbo in Abuja at ebalagbogbo@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net Dulue Mbachu, Ben Holland
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