Wednesday, 29 May 2013
The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau has claimed in a video obtained by the Agence France Presse (AFP) yesterday that Nigerian soldiers have retreated during an ongoing military offensive while insurgents have sustained little damage.
The video marks the first public comments Shekau since the start of a sweeping offensive by the Nigerian army on May 15 and also includes a call for foreign Islamists to join the fight in Nigeria.
Shekau’s whereabouts cannot be determined in the video, in which he is shown seated and dressed in camouflage with a turban, an AK-47 at his side.
Whilst Shekau claims victory over military, the military also has claimed major successes during the offensive, including the destruction of Boko Haram camps and dozens of arrests.
It has been impossible to verify the claims of either side independently, with the military having cut mobile phone service in much of the country’s northeast and access to remote locations restricted.
“Since we started this ongoing war which they call state of emergency, in some instances soldiers who faced us turned and ran,” Shekau says in the hour-long video.
He claims Nigerian forces “threw down their arms in flight.” He calls on like-minded Islamists in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to join the fight to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.
“We call to us our brethren in these countries I mentioned. Oh! Our brethren, come to us,” he says in the video, which alternates between Arabic and the Hausa language spoken across northern Nigeria. The video later purports to show vehicles and weapons seized from Nigerian soldiers.
