iswap militants

on Monday, in an attack the military said killed 70 "bandit" gang members. A local resident who lost his daughter and two other family members told AFP they buried 13 bodies.

In Borno, Nigeria, a devastating attack by Boko Haram's JAS faction resulted in at least 57 deaths and over 70 missing from two villages, with victims accused of being informants for ISWAP.

The Nigerian army says 335 Boko Haram extremists, including two top commanders, have laid down their arms and withdrawn from the sect in response to a military offensive in the northeast.

A bomb explosion in Nigeria, claimed by the Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP), killed 26 people, including women and children. The explosives struck civilian vehicles on a route between Rann and Gamboru in Borno state. A Toyota pickup carrying farmers and traders suffered the most casualties after hitting a landmine.

At least four police officers were killed in Nigeria's northeast Borno state after a gun battle with suspected Islamist insurgents, a police spokesperson said on Saturday. Borno has been the heartland of an insurgency by Boko Haram and splinter outfit Islamist State West Africa Province (ISWAP) for more than a decade in the northeast, where they continue to carry out deadly attacks against civilian and security targets.

A jihadist raid on a military base in northeast Nigeria near the border with Cameroon killed five troops from a multinational coalition Friday, two military sources told AFP. Fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) stormed the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) base housing Nigerian and Cameroonian troops in the town of Wulgo in a pre-dawn attack, engaging troops in a gunfight, the two sources said. In Friday's attack, the jihadists burned two mine-resistant armoured vehicles and five military trucks, and seized several motorcycles belonging to local hunters assisting the troops in fighting jihadist groups in the region, the two sources said.

Barkindo Saidu, director general of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency, said suspected suicide bombers separately attacked a wedding, funeral and hospital, killing and injuring several people in the town of Gwoza. Saidu said 18 deaths had been confirmed, a toll that included children, adults and pregnant women. "The degree of injuries ranges from abdominal ruptures, scull fractures, and limb fractures," he said. Borno is at the centre of a 15-year Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.

Northeastern Nigeria's governors are urging the government to adopt a new strategy against a resurgence of Islamist militant attacks. Recent violence, claiming over 100 lives, has prompted calls for a reappraisal of counter-insurgency tactics.

Islamic State-allied Boko Haram jihadists have killed another kidnapped female Red Cross worker in northeast Nigeria, the agency said on Tuesday, a month after militants murdered one of her colleagues. Three female health workers were kidnapped on March 1 during a Boko Haram raid on the remote town of Rann, in Borno state, that killed three other aid workers and eight Nigerian soldiers.

Mali is on the brink of falling under the control of al-Qaida's regional affiliate, JNIM, marking a significant shift in West African power dynamics. The group has implemented a sophisticated strategy, effectively strangling the state and establishing a shadow administration. This unfolding crisis threatens to create a vast arc of jihadist influence across the Sahel, with profound global implications.