Kano, Nigeria: Nine Nigerian soldiers were killed and 14 others are missing feared abducted after an attack this week by suspected Boko Haram jihadists in the violence-torn northeast, security sources said Thursday.
Authorities had on Tuesday said five soldiers were killed and five others injured in the raid on a military post near the village of Sabon Garin Kimba about 140 kilometers (90 miles) from Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram.
“The number of fatalities on our side has risen to nine with the discovery of four more bodies of our troops,” said a military officer with knowledge of the incident.
“Since the attack 14 other soldiers remain missing. Their fate is unknown,” said the officer who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on the incident.
Scores of fighters loyal to the Boko Haram faction headed by Abu Musab Al-Barnawi stormed the checkpoint late Monday.
The Daesh group last year appointed Al-Barnawi as head of Boko Haram, replacing long-time leader Abubakar Shekau.
Mustapha Karimbe, a member of an anti-Boko Haram militia, said he feared the missing soldiers had been seized.
“Fourteen soldiers are unaccounted for, they have been missing since the attack and the fear is that they have have been abducted by the terrorists,” Karimbe said.
The jihadists carrying heavy weapons engaged troops at the checkpoint in a shootout and forced the soldiers to withdraw. Karimbe said the jihadists took military vehicles and burned three armored cars along with makeshift sheds.
This was the second attack on the same military checkpoint in under a month.
Late last month, jihadists dressed in Nigerian military uniforms attacked the checkpoint and forced soldiers to withdraw before looting food and medical supplies from the village.
Boko Haram has in recent weeks intensified attacks on military targets in the northeast.
The insurgency began in northeast Nigeria and has spread to Chad, Cameroon and Niger, claiming more than 20,000 lives and displacing 2.6 million people.
![]()
Boko Haram raid killed nine Nigerian soldiers
Boko Haram raid killed nine Nigerian soldiers
Zimbabwe opposition says constitutional ‘coup’ under way
- The accusations came after the cabinet approved amendments that would allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend his term in office
HARARE: Leading Zimbabwe opposition figures accused the government Wednesday of a constitutional “coup” after the cabinet approved amendments that would allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend his term in office.
Sweeping changes to the constitution accepted by the cabinet Tuesday include extending the presidential term to seven years and follow a decision by the ruling Zanu-PF that Mnangagwa should stay in office beyond the end of his second term in 2028.
The amendments will be presented to parliament, which is weighted in favor of the Zanu-PF, but the opposition insists they also need to be put to a national referendum.
“The process that is currently happening in Zimbabwe is a coup by the incumbent to extend his term of office against the will of the people,” opposition politician and fierce government critic Job Sikhala told AFP.
“We have got an incumbent who wants to railroad himself, using the tyrannical and dictatorial tendencies of his rule, into another two years to 2030,” he said.
He said his National Democratic Working Group had asked the African Union to intervene.
Mnangagwa came to power in 2017 in a military-backed coup that ousted Robert Mugabe, who ruled the southern African country for 37 years.
He was elected to a five-year term in 2018 and again in 2023 but has been accused of allowing rampant corruption to the benefit of the Zanu-PF — which has been in power since independence in 1980 — while eroding democratic rights.
Sikhala, a former lawmaker with the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party, was arrested in South Africa last year for alleged possession of explosives. He says they were planted in his vehicle in an apparent assassination attempt.
“What is unfolding in Zimbabwe is not constitutional reform. It is a constitutional coup,” Jameson Timba, a CCC leader who has established a group called the Defend the Constitution Platform (DCP), said in a statement on X.
The president and his party are using “formal processes” such as cabinet decisions “to entrench power without the free and direct consent of the people,” he said.
Sweeping changes to the constitution accepted by the cabinet Tuesday include extending the presidential term to seven years and follow a decision by the ruling Zanu-PF that Mnangagwa should stay in office beyond the end of his second term in 2028.
The amendments will be presented to parliament, which is weighted in favor of the Zanu-PF, but the opposition insists they also need to be put to a national referendum.
“The process that is currently happening in Zimbabwe is a coup by the incumbent to extend his term of office against the will of the people,” opposition politician and fierce government critic Job Sikhala told AFP.
“We have got an incumbent who wants to railroad himself, using the tyrannical and dictatorial tendencies of his rule, into another two years to 2030,” he said.
He said his National Democratic Working Group had asked the African Union to intervene.
Mnangagwa came to power in 2017 in a military-backed coup that ousted Robert Mugabe, who ruled the southern African country for 37 years.
He was elected to a five-year term in 2018 and again in 2023 but has been accused of allowing rampant corruption to the benefit of the Zanu-PF — which has been in power since independence in 1980 — while eroding democratic rights.
Sikhala, a former lawmaker with the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party, was arrested in South Africa last year for alleged possession of explosives. He says they were planted in his vehicle in an apparent assassination attempt.
“What is unfolding in Zimbabwe is not constitutional reform. It is a constitutional coup,” Jameson Timba, a CCC leader who has established a group called the Defend the Constitution Platform (DCP), said in a statement on X.
The president and his party are using “formal processes” such as cabinet decisions “to entrench power without the free and direct consent of the people,” he said.
Latest updates
Recommended
© 2026 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.