Sokoto hostage rescue attempt | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of Boko Haram insurgency | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
![]() ![]() | ![]() | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
Special Boat Service | Boko Haram | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
![]() ![]() | Unknown | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
2 hostages executed | 8 killed, 2-3 arrested |
On 8 March 2012, members of the British military Special Boat Service, supported by members of the Nigerian Army, attempted a rescue mission to rescue British hostage Chris McManus and Italian hostage Franco Lamolinara from Boko Haram, supported by Al Qaeda, in Sokoto in north-west Nigeria. The mission failed when both hostages were executed by their captors. [1]
Chris McManus, 28, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, was a British contract worker for Italian construction company B Stabilini. He was kidnapped on 12 May 2011 in a raid by militants from his apartment in Birnin-Kebbi, along with an Italian colleague Franco Lamolinara, from Gattinara, Piedmont, who also worked for B Stabilini. In August 2011 the kidnappers released a hostage video to a Mauritian news agency, threatening to kill McManus and Lamolinara unless demands were met. [1] [2] [3] [4]
They were kidnapped by militants calling themselves "al-Qaida in the land beyond the Sahil". British and Nigerian officials and news sources stated that they were members of Boko Haram backed by Al Qaeda, and that they had received training in Niger from al Qaeda in the Maghreb. [5] The militants' demands changed frequently; they wanted the Nigerian government to release prisoners, but kept changing specific prisoners they wanted released. [3]
Following the kidnapping, British authorities worked closely with Nigerian authorities to find the hostages. [6]
On 6 March 2012, Nigerian security agencies arrested Abu Mohammed, the factional leader of Boko haram, and 4 other members of the sect. They showed the security agencies the compound in the Mabera neighbourhood of Sokoto where the hostages were located and raised concern that the hostages might be killed if the security agencies did not move quickly to free the hostages. [5] Also, an intercepted phone call from the militants suggested that they were going to move and execute the hostages after they suspected something was wrong due to their leader and the four others being missing. [3] [2]
The COBR committee met to monitor the situation. GCHQ monitored phone calls and used satellite technology to confirm their location and passed on the intelligence to the Director of Special Forces, who in turn passed it to the SBS commander in Nigeria. On the morning of 8 March 2012, David Cameron authorised the emergency rescue mission after being informed of the location of the hostages. [3]
The Italian government was not informed of the rescue mission until it was underway. [5]
Personnel from the British Special Boat Service (SBS), supported by their counterparts in the Nigerian Army, launched the operation to free the hostages at 10am Greenwich Mean Time. The SBS Squadron, which had been in the country for up to two weeks, could not use helicopters to assault the building for fear of alerting the kidnappers. Instead, they were transported to the target building in Nigerian vehicles. Some news reports put the number of SBS troops who carried out the raid at six to eight, whilst others put the number at 16 to 20. In the brief assault, a Nigerian Army APC rammed the gates of the target compound, and the SBS stormed the building and killed two militants, whilst Nigerian troops killed a further six militants. The bodies of McManus and Lamolinara were found, and a later autopsy revealed that they had been hastily executed at close range. [7] [5] [3] [2]
Following the raid, gunfire continued into the night and a further two or three militants were arrested. The raid strained relations between the United Kingdom and Italy, and the Italian government demanded an explanation from British government as to why it was not informed about the rescue attempt. [5] Italy's prime minister asked the Nigerian government for a detailed reconstruction of the events leading to the hostages' death. [3]
Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan is a Nigerian politician who served as the president of Nigeria from 2010 to 2015. He lost the 2015 presidential election to former military head of state General Muhammadu Buhari and was the first incumbent president in Nigerian history to concede defeat in an election and therefore allow for a peaceful transition of power.
Since 2006, militant groups in Nigeria's Niger Delta, especially the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have resorted to taking foreign employees of oil companies hostage as part of the conflict in the Niger Delta. More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped since 2006, though most were released unharmed.
Boko Haram, officially known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād, is an Islamist jihadist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, which is also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon, and Mali. In 2016, the group split, resulting in the emergence of a hostile faction known as the Islamic State's West Africa Province.
The Boko Haram insurgency began in July 2009, when the militant Islamist and jihadist rebel group Boko Haram started an armed rebellion against the government of Nigeria. The conflict is taking place within the context of long-standing issues of religious violence between Nigeria's Muslim and Christian communities, and the insurgents' ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in the region.
Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is an Islamist militant organization that aims to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state. To that end, it is currently engaged in an insurgency campaign in the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
Abu Mohammed Abubakar al-Sheikawi was a Kanuri terrorist who was the leader of Boko Haram, a Nigerian Islamist militant group from 2009 to 2021. He served as deputy leader to the group's founder, Mohammed Yusuf, until Yusuf's execution in 2009.
The Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa, better known as Ansaru and less commonly called al-Qaeda in the Lands Beyond the Sahel, is an Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist militant organisation based in the northeast of Nigeria. It originated as a faction of Boko Haram but became officially independent in 2012. Despite this, Ansaru and other Boko Haram factions continued to work closely together until the former increasingly declined and stopped its insurgent activities in 2015. Since then, Ansaru is mostly dormant though its members continue to spread propaganda for their cause.
Timeline of the Boko Haram insurgency is the chronology of the Boko Haram insurgency, an ongoing armed conflict between Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram and the Nigerian government. Boko Haram have carried out many attacks against the military, police and civilians since 2009, mostly in Nigeria. The low-intensity conflict is centred on Borno State. It peaked in the mid-2010s, when Boko Haram extended their insurgency into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
On the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group called Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Prior to the raid, the school had been closed for four weeks due to deteriorating security conditions, but the girls were in attendance in order to take final exams in physics.
From 20 to 23 June 2014, a series of attacks occurred in Borno State, Nigeria. 91 women and children were kidnapped in the attacks and more than 70 people were killed.
Religious violence in Nigeria refers to Christian-Muslim strife in modern Nigeria, which can be traced back to 1953. Today, religious violence in Nigeria is dominated by the Boko Haram insurgency, which aims to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. Since the turn of the 21st century, 62,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed by the terrorist group Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen and other groups. The killings have been referred to as a silent genocide.
The following lists events from 2014 in Nigeria.
The following lists events that happened in 2013 in Nigeria.
On 13 December 2014, 172–185 villagers in the village of Gumsuri were kidnapped, suspected to be by Boko Haram militants. 32–35 people were killed.
The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Cameroon.
Starting in late January 2015, a coalition of West African troops launched an offensive against the Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria.
This article contains a timeline of events from January 2015 to December 2015 related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). This article contains information about events committed by or on behalf of the Islamic State, as well as events performed by groups who oppose them.
Operation Turus is the code name of the British military operation to assist Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency. It was launched in April 2014 by Prime Minister David Cameron in response to the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping which saw over a hundred schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, a jihadist terrorist organisation in northeastern Nigeria. Initial efforts were focused on the search for the missing schoolgirls, with the UK deploying military specialists, satellite imagery and reconnaissance aircraft from the Royal Air Force. According to a source quoted in The Observer, the UK successfully located the missing schoolgirls and offered to rescue them but this offer was rejected by the Nigerian government which considered it a national issue. Most of the schoolgirls remain missing.
During the early hours of October 31, 2020, United States Navy SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) conducted an operation in Northern Nigeria, resulting in the rescue of an American hostage and the killing of six of the seven captors. The hostage, 27-year-old Philip Walton, had been kidnapped in front of his family at his home in the village of Massalata in neighboring Niger on 26 October by armed gunmen, who intended to sell him to armed terrorist groups in the area.
The Koshebe massacre took place on 28 November 2020 in the village of Koshebe, Nigeria, in Borno State, when as many as 110 civilians and peasant farmers were killed and six were wounded as they worked in rice fields in Koshebe village, near the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri. The attack was thought to be carried out by the Boko Haram insurgency. About 15 women were also kidnapped.