Military special forces on Wednesday carried out a major
operation against the Boko Haram fighters at a
forest region between Borno and Yobe states.
A security source
said the special forces, who carried out an aerial surveilance of the area,
discovered a major camp of the insurgents some kilometers away from the Yobe
State School of Agriculture, Gujba, where about 90 students were murdered on
Sunday.
The source said that
the operation was one of the biggest offensives of the Nigerian military
against the Boko Haram since the declaration of the emergency rule by President
Goodluck Jonathan in Borno, Yobe and
Adamawa states.
Investigations revealed that three Alpha jets, several heavy
artillery weapons and a large number of ground forces of the Division 7 of the
Nigerian Army in Borno and Yobe states participated in the operation.
Although, the source could not give the casualty figure in the operation, he stated that the camp was
one of the largest to have been discovered and could contain hundreds of
insurgents.
It was further stated that the entire forest was engulfed in
a thick fire as at the time of filing the reports.
A highly placed Defence Headquarters source said that the
military devised “a strategy to box them in” to prevent them from escaping
during the operation.
It was learnt that
the men of the Joint Task Force in Yobe and those in Maiduguri were
deployed simultaneously alongside three
Alpha jets of the Nigerian Air Force during the Wednesday raid by the military.
The source said that
the Nigerian military sustained the fierce attack on the terrorists’ enclave
all through the operation that lasted several hours.
The source said, “The operation today was a massive one.
Heavy artillery guns were deployed, Air Force, and ground troops from Borno and
Yobe were deployed in large number.”
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