End of the Road for Boko Haram terrorists

Four suicide bombers detonated their explosives after being detected by a group of locals on a Lake Chad island, killing three of the attackers but no other people, official and security sources said on Wednesday.

The bombers were part of a team of seven militants headed from Chad’s Yogo island to the weekly market in the lakeside town of Bol in a motorised canoe, the sources said.

In an overnight raid,  Boko Haram militants also killed five people in  in Niger in the third suspected attack by the group in less than 24 hours, security sources said on Wednesday.

In the most deadly of three attacks since Tuesday, militants killed two soldiers and three civilians in Niger’s southern border town of Abadam overnight, the sources said.

About 150 km (90 miles) east in Chad, three militants were killed when they detonated suicide bombs after being found out by a group of local people as they sought to embark from an island to a lakeside market in Bol. A fourth set off his bomb but survived.

“They were intercepted by villagers who wanted to search them and they resisted,” said a local official who asked not to be named. Three other militants managed to shed the explosives they were carrying and swim away, he added.

In Cameroon’s Far North Region, several suspected Boko Haram fighters attacked three food trucks near the Chadian border on Wednesday, officials said. Cameroonian Special Forces (BIR) arrived shortly afterwards and there were no deaths or injuries.

Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people to flee their homes during its six-year insurgency in one of the world’s poorest regions.

Regional governments including Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin have pledged to destroy the group using an 8,700-strong regional task force. The United States has also sent troops to supply intelligence and other assistance.