Weakened Boko Haram still attacks

The militants killed two Nigerian soldiers in Baga and launched a failed bomb attack on a Shiite Mosque in Potiskum.

The already weakened Boko Haram militants have persisted in their attacks in Nigeria with the latest case being the rocket attack on a Nigerian military vehicle in Baga town, Borno State, killing two soldiers and critically injuring six other soldiers and a civilian vigilante on Sunday, April 19, 2015, Mail Online reported, citing residents.

Reports say the attack and the mine explosion happened as the military escorted some 1,200 people from Baga on a brief return visit to their hometown from the Borno State capital, Maiduguri. "Boko Haram fired a rocket-propelled grenade on a military van in an ambush in Baga which killed two soldiers and destroyed the vehicle," said resident Karimbe Maina, Mail Online quoted.

A member of the town’s vigilante group, Haruna Shuaibu is further quoted as saying that, "Following the attack which killed two soldiers there was a prolonged gun battle ?between soldiers and the Boko Haram gunmen, which forced the gunmen to flee."

It is said that the soldiers were driving back to their base outside Baga to mobilize more troops to help drag an armoured vehicle stuck in the mud across town on the shores of Lake Chad. Military spokesman Chris Olukolade is cited as saying that troops had to clear landmines planted by Boko Haram before being able to enter Baga.

In Potiskum, the commercial hub of Yobe State still in north eastern Nigeria, a suspected Boko Haram suicide bomber detonated his explosives a few metres from an open-air Shiite mosque in Dogo Tebo neighbourhood shortly after noon prayers last Friday.

"Three worshippers were hit by shrapnel and sustained mild injuries, while the bomber's thighs and legs were blown off," Mail Online quoted the local resident Mukhtar Ubale as saying.