Nigeria: Anti-Boko Haram task force recaptures Damasak town in Borno state
A multinational task force battling Boko Haram said on Thursday it had recaptured the only town in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state that was still held by the Islamist militant group.
Boko Haram, which formed in Borno, has waged an insurgency since 2009 to carve out a state based on sharia (Islamic law) in the northeast of Africa’s most populous country. More than 15,000 people have been killed and some 2.4 million displaced.
Damasak, captured by Boko Haram in October 2014, was part of an area around the size of Belgium that the jihadist group controlled in northeast Nigeria by the end of 2009.
Its attacks have spread to neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, which prompted those nations to combine troops to form the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF).