How Boko Haram leader Shekau killed himself, ISWAP commanders

 

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau who reportedly committed suicide Wednesday, died along with several commanders of rival terror group ISWAP.

RELIABLESOURCENG.COM reports that an online medium, HumAngle, quoting multiple sources said that Shekau’s stronghold in Sambisa forest was invaded by a column of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters.

ISWAP, which had broken away from the Shekau-led Boko Haram faction in 2016 after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), raided the group’s hideout using multiple gun trucks.

According to the publication, Shekau’s enclave was tracked down by ISWAP using its forces based in the Timbuktu Triangle. His fighters were killed in the process, followed by a long gunfire exchange between the invading group and Shekau’s bodyguards.

After he was subdued, Shekau surrendered and engaged in an hours-long meeting with the ISWAP fighters. During the meeting, he was asked to voluntarily relinquish power and order his fighters in other areas to declare bai’a (allegiance) to ISWAP’s authority. The ISWAP commanders had expected Shekau to issue a statement.

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Sources within the insurgency, however, said that Shekau who secretly had a suicide vest on eventually blew himself up alongside everyone present during the negotiations.

“The identities of the people within ISWAP’s leadership who lost their lives to the explosion remain unclear at this time,” HumAngle reports.

Shekau had been the leader of Boko Haram since 2009 following the death of the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf. He had been rumoured to have been killed at least four times between July 2009 and August 2015.

In August 2016, the Nigerian Air Force claimed he had been “fatally wounded” by military bombardments, but the terror group released a video only a month later showing he was alive and in good health.