By Jaime Ortega.
Boko Haram is now responsible for more than 3.000 deaths in Nigeria, including women and children. The total amount of official deaths is unknown given that many Nigerian villages don’t censor citizens.
The leader of Nigerian Islamist armed group expressed support for the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State (EI), which controls several regions of Syria, Iraq, Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban; in a video released on Sunday, the group claimed new attacks.
“My brothers (..) that Allah will protect them,” says Abubakar Shekau in the video, delivered to the AFP, addressing heads of EI, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, and the leader of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Omar.
In the 16 minutes that play, the leader of Nigerian Islamist group also claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and Lagos on June 25.
“We were the ones to detonate the dirty bomb in Abuja,” Shekau said in reference to an attack on a popular shopping mall that left 22 people dead.
Another explosion occurred hours later in Lagos without officially leaving victims that authorities attributed to a gas explosion. However, an investigation revealed that was a deliberate bombing.
“In Lagos, a bomb exploded,” said Shekau in the video, which the authorities try to investigate.
The leader of Boko Haram also scoffs at the video of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign (Give us back our girls), which emerged after the abduction of more than 200 teenagers on April 14 at the hands of Islamists in the town of Chibok (northeast )
