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MAIDUGURI. — Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, according to a video posted online.
The pledge came in an Arabic audio message with English subtitles alleged to have come from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and posted Saturday on Twitter, according to the SITE Intelligence monitoring service.
“We announce our allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims . . . and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity, in hardship and ease, and to endure being discriminated against, and not to dispute about rule with those in power, except in case of evident infidelity regarding that which there is a proof from Allah,” said the message.
The video script identified the caliph as Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-Awad al-Qurashi, who is better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State and self-proclaimed caliph of the Muslim world. Baghdadi has already accepted pledges of allegiance from other jihadist groups in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north Africa.
Boko Haram has been waging a six-year military campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
Earlier on Saturday, four bomb blasts killed at least 50 people in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri in the worst attacks there since Boko Haram militants tried to seize the town in two major assaults earlier this year.
Female suicide bombers believed to be acting for the group launched a series of attacks in markets, while another detonation was reported at a bus station.
In a fifth incident, a car bomb exploded at a military checkpoint 75km outside the city, wounding a soldier and two members of a civilian defence unit. The attacker in this incident had wanted to reach Maiduguri, a police officer at the scene said.
In total, it is believed 58 people have been killed in the incidents and 143 wounded, but both figures were expected to rise.
Maiduguri was once the base of the Islamist group, which has been conducting a campaign of violence pushing for Islamic rule in Nigeria. At least 13 000 people have so far been killed in the campaign. — The Guardian.
Online Reporter