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Chadian forces scored a key victory over Nigeria's Boko Haram on Tuesday, wresting control of the border town of Gamboru within hours of launching a ground offensive against the jihadist group. Around 2,000 Chadian troops backed by armoured vehicles crossed the border into Gamboru from the Cameroonian town of Fotokol . ... The ground intervention by Chad came after the African Union last week backed a regional five-nation, 7,500-strong force to take on the extremists amid growing fears about their threat to regional security. Nigeria has drawn fierce criticism for failing to hold back the insurgents, who have stepped up...

Boko Haram is officially an international problem. At least according to the African Union, which asked the United Nations Security Council on Jan. 29 to greenlight an intervention force to bring the Islamist group to its knees. The A.U. plans a 7,500-strong military force, named the Multinational Joint Task Force, and staffed by Nigerian, Cameroonian, Chadian and Beninese troops. If the coalition gets the go-ahead, the soldiers will base in their respective countries, but coordinate and assist each other.

As thousands of Nigerians and Cameroonians fled for their lives from rampaging Boko Haram fighters, the leader of the violent Islamist group reportedly bragged in a video released Tuesday about the slaughter in the town of Baga and promised that there would be more to come. “We killed the people of Baga,” Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau boasted in the video, first reported by Agence France-Presse. “We indeed killed them, as our Lord instructed us in His Book. … We will not stop. This is not much. You’ll see.” The video could not be independently authenticated. It was similar in...

Chad will send a large number of troops to neighboring Cameroon to help it fight increasing incursions from Boko Haram Islamist militants attacking from Nigeria ... Biya has called for international military help to fight the Islamist militant group that has seized swathes of northern Nigeria and is threatening neighbors who share borders with the northeastern zones occupied by the group. Boko Haram, which aims to carve out an Islamist state in northern Nigeria, has stepped up attacks in the region as Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, prepares for a crucial Feb. 14 presidential election. The group has also carried out...

United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Israel was asked by the UN General Assembly on Friday to compensate Lebanon for $856.4 million in oil spill damages it caused during its 2006 war with Hezbollah. The non-binding vote, which passed 170-6, asks Israel to offer "prompt and adequate compensation" to Lebanon and other countries affected by the oil spill's pollution. In a statement, Israel condemned the resolution as biased against the nation, Israeli media reported. The oil spill was caused by Israel's air force when it bombed oil tanks near a coastal Lebanese power plant during the fierce month-long war with...

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli government will send three mobile emergency clinics to western Africa in an effort to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. Medical experts will be attached to each clinic sent by Mashav-Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, a part of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The staffers will train local health care workers in the operation of the clinic and its equipment, the ministry said in a statement. In addition, staff training will focus on raising awareness among populations with high potential for infection. An Israeli team has already been sent to Cameroon. The ministry also...

the leader of the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram has established the world's second Islamic "caliphate" this summer and is seeking to cement his bloody rule on a territory that is now roughly the size of west Virginia. While much of the world has been focused on the brutal reign of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the forces of Boko haram have been racking up victories in northern Nigeria and have been violently imposing an equally harsh version of Islamic law on approximately 3 million civilians - including beheadings, forced marriages and the forced induction of children into its military...

<p>YOLA, Nigeria (AP) - ...Boko Haram, has seized more towns along Nigeria's northeastern border with Cameroon and is adopting a strategy of encouraging civilians to stay, witnesses said Sunday, as the militants pursue their new aim to carve out an "Islamic caliphate" under their black and white flag.</p>

<p>A star soccer player has died after he was hit in the head by an object thrown from the crowd during a game in Algeria's top league.</p> <p>The Confederation of African Football says 24-year-old striker Albert Ebosse of Cameroon died in the hospital Saturday night.</p>

"President Barack Obama drew the diplomatic line somewhere at the first ever U.S-Africa summit at the White House this week by not inviting Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe. But the guest list still included several other African leaders with only slightly better human rights records. The White House promoted the summit as the largest-ever gathering of African leaders in the United States, with more than 50 countries represented. The red carpet was rolled out for Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who shot or jailed virtually all his political opponents, Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, who threatened to ‘cut off the head’...

Nigerian Boko Haram militants kidnapped the wife of Cameroon's vice prime minister and killed at least three people on Sunday in a cross-border attack involving more than 200 assailants in the northern town of Kolofata, Cameroon officials said. A local religious leader, or lamido, named Seini Boukar Lamine, who is also the town's mayor, and five members of his family were also kidnapped in a separate attack on his home. SNIP Boko Haram, an Islamist group which made international headlines with the abduction of 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in April, has stepped up cross-border attacks into Cameroon in recent weeks. Cameroon...

Some members of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, arrested yesterday at Mairi ward behind University of Maiduguri by members of the Civilian JTF vigilante group, have confessed that most of them are fleeing the Sambisa Forest to areas across Borno State owing to what they believe is spiritual attacks from mysterious snakes and bees, which had killed many of their leaders. According to Kolo Mustapha, one of the arrested insurgents, “most of us are fleeing because there are too many snakes and bees now in the forest. Once they bite, they disappear and the victims do not last for 24...

A Nigerian singer has offered her virginity to Boko Haram in exchange for the 276 girls they recently kidnapped, according to Vanguard Showtime. “They are between 12 and 15 year old girls for Christ sake,” Adokiye Kyrian said. “It is just unfair. They are too young. I wish I could offer myself in exchange.” Despite revealing she is still a virgin, the 23-year-old says she is “older and more experienced.” “Even if 10 to 12 men have to take me every night, I don’t care. Just release those girls and let them go back to their parents.” Some have criticized...

Brazil striker Fred got his first goal just in the whisker of time at the World Cup, scoring as the group stage was coming to an end. He's attributing the change in fortunes to the new mustache. The much-criticized forward scored Brazil's third goal in a 4-1 win over Cameroon on Monday, helping his team reach the second round. SNIP "As incredible as it seems, the ball came in hard and it ended up hitting my mustache," Fred said. "It was a mustache goal." SNIP

MAIDUGURI—Boko Haram terrorists are reportedly asking for 800 cows as a precondition for the release of the abducted 20 Fulani women. The terrorists demanded that each of the women would be swapped with 20 cows each bringing the total to 800 cows, husbands of the abducted women and other security sources have said. The people of Chibok, including members of the Vigilante Youths denied the abduction of the Fulani women when news of the kidnap first filtered, saying that the only people missing in the area were the 230 female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok. The police authorities...

Abductions Near Town Where Students Were Grabbed Reflect Lack of ProtectionACCRA, Ghana—Nigeria's Islamist insurgency on Monday kidnapped some 20 girls just miles from a small town where the group abducted several hundred schoolgirls in April, local officials said, in an attack that exposed the military's absence in an area the president pledged to protect. The village of Garkin Fulani was preparing for its weekly market early Monday when Boko Haram fighters pulled up in a tractor trailer and began pulling young girls into the truck, said Adu Ibrahim, the area's chairman for a vigilante group called the Civilian Joint Task...

Boko Haram militants have killed dozens of people in fresh attacks on villages in Borno state in northern Nigeria, the BBC has learnt.In one attack, gunmen reportedly fired on a crowd in a church compound. Boko Haram has waged an increasingly bloody insurgency since 2009 to create an Islamic state in Nigeria. The latest attacks come as the Nigerian army has denied reports that several generals have been found guilty of aiding Boko Haram in their insurgency. Nigerian media reported on Tuesday that 10 generals and five other senior military officers had been tried before a court martial for supplying...

Suspected Islamist Boko Haram gunmen rampaged through three villages in northern Nigeria, killing 28 people and burning houses to the ground in a pattern of violence that has become almost a daily occurrence, according to police and witnesses. All three attacks happened on Thursday in remote parts of Borno state, the epicenter of Boko Haram's increasingly bloody struggle for an Islamic kingdom in religiously mixed Nigeria. One took place right next to Chibok, by the Cameroon border, from where more than 200 school girls were abducted last month.

PARIS (Reuters) - West African leaders on Saturday agreed to work together to wage "total war" on Boko Haram saying the Nigerian Islamist group had become a regional al Qaeda that threatened all of them. Nigeria's neighbors Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin, and Western officials, met in Paris to flesh out a plan enabling them for the first time to share intelligence, coordinate action and monitor borders. Although Boko Haram has been fighting for five years, carrying out bombings and attacks on civilians and the security forces, the kidnapping last month of more than 200 girls from a school in...

Suspected rebels from Nigeria's Islamist militant group Boko Haram attacked a Chinese plant in northern Cameroon near the town of Waza, a local governor told Reuters on Saturday. Waza is 20 km (12 miles) from the Nigerian border close to the Sambisa forest, a stronghold of Boko Haram which has killed thousands in Nigeria in a five-year insurgency for an Islamist state and threatens to destabilize the wider region.