*ISWAP claims responsibility
Suspected terrorists about midnight of Saturday, March 23, attacked a military base in Gujba town, Gujba Local Government Area of Yobe State, killing a soldier.
Yobe State Police Command Public Relations Officer, DSP Dungus Abdulkarim, who confirmed the attack on Sunday, said a military patrol vehicle was also torched by the suspected terrorists.
“The only thing I can confirm to you now is the attack. A soldier was killed, and troops and CJTF engaged the suspected terrorists,” he said.
According to sources, the suspected insurgents, who stormed the town by 12 midnight, shooting indiscriminately and subsequently attacking the military base, were later repelled by troops who chased them out to the surrounding bush.
A resident of Gujba, Modu Bahna, while narrating his ordeal, said, “they (suspected terrorists) stormed the town some minutes after midnight, shooting sporadically and majority of us took to our heels into the surrounding bushes for our dear lives.
“The attackers did not kill any civilian or loot food or other essential commodities stores,” another source, Dala Bukar, said, adding, “they only attacked the two patrol vehicles in the military base where a soldier was killed.”
Meanwhile, the Islamic State-backed faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), formerly known as Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād, has claimed that its fighters killed a Nigerian soldier in Yobe State.
According to ISWAP in a statement, the soldier was killed when the terrorists attacked a military base in Gujba town in the Gujba Local Government Area of the state on Saturday morning.
Gujba is about 30 kilometres away from Damaturu, the Yobe State capital.
The terror group added that it razed two military operational vehicles.
“An attack targeted a Nigerian army barracks, in the town of Gujba in the Yobe area, using various weapons, killing one member and making the others run away, and then burning two vehicles, and taking a heavy machine gun and a medium one and ammunitions,” it said.
Since the death of JAS leader, Abubakar Shekau, ISWAP has been consolidating its grip in locations around Lake Chad.
The sect’s membership has swollen with the defection of hundreds of Boko Haram fighters under Shekau.
This recent killing of a personal is coming after 15 soldiers were killed during a communal clash in Delta State.
The personnel consist of two Majors, one Captain, and 12 soldiers.
They were said to have met their deaths while responding to a distress call during a clash between Okuama and Okoloba communities in the state.
