KANO – Boko Haram’s leader said in a video obtained by AFP on
Thursday that the group was behind a daring raid on military
installations in the north Nigerian city of Maiduguri earlier this
month.
“Allah the Almighty has given us victory in the attack we
launched inside Maiduguri (which was) called Borno in ancient times,”
said Abubakar Shekau in a 40-minute clip.
Speaking in Arabic,
Hausa and Kanuri widely spoken in northeast Nigeria, Shekau added: “We
stormed the city and fought them (and) Allah blessed us with lots of
booty.”
The video, which was obtained through an intermediary,
shows Shekau dressed in military fatigues with a turban and Kalashnikov
assault rifle leaning on his chest.
He speaks for 19 minutes in
all while the rest of the tape shows images of burning buildings and
aircraft said to be from the December 2 attack in Maiduguri, which is
capital of Borno state.
Shekau
It
also shows a display of weapons the banned Islamist group says it
seized in the attack, including dozens of Kalashnikovs and rockets.
The authenticity of the tape could not be verified independently.
Gunmen
who arrived on pick-up trucks besieged an army and air force base,
destroying aircraft, razing buildings and setting shops and petrol
stations ablaze, witnesses said.
The early morning raid was seen
as significant because the Nigerian military had previously claimed to
have pushed the militants out of urban centres and into more remote,
rural areas.
Local people reported that the attackers were
carrying AK-47 assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades in the
assault, which prompted the local authorities to impose a city-wide
curfew.
Maiduguri is considered the spiritual home of Boko Haram,
whose name roughly translates from Hausa as “Western education is sin”.
The group’s aim is to impose a harsh form of Islamic law or sharia across the country.
Thousands
of people have died in deadly violence since 2009, both at the hands of
the militants and as a result of the military response to the violence.
In the Maiduguri raid, Nigeria’s military said 24 militants were killed and two service personnel were wounded.
But Shekau said only seven fighters lost their lives — three in suicide bombings, three were shot and one in “friendly fire”.
At least two local residents were also killed, people in the city said.
The US State Department in July offered a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to the arrest of Shekau.
In
the video, he said “the whole world” feared him, name-checking US
President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even the late British premier
Margaret Thatcher.
Shekau singled out in particular the United
States, which on November 13 designated Boko Haram and its offshoot
Ansaru as international terror groups.
“You are boasting you are
going to join forces with Nigeria to crush us. Bloody liars,” he said,
in an apparent reference to a pledge by Washington to support Abuja in
the fight against the extremists.
“You couldn’t crush us when we
were carrying sticks,” he said, adding: “By Allah, we will never stop.
Don’t think we will stop in Maiduguri.
“Tomorrow you will see us in America itself. Our operation is not confined to Nigeria. It is for the whole world.”
Shekau’s
claims about the international nature of Boko Haram stand at odds with
analysts’ general assessments that the group is largely Nigeria-based.
But
the United States has said the group and Ansaru have links the wider
Islamist jihadi network, in particular Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM), which has provided limited training and funding.(AFP)
