Islamist militants launched a deadly ambush on Nigerian soldiers who were travelling on Tuesday on a key highway that re-opened in January after being closed last year because of frequent attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thirty-five soldiers are reported to have been killed in the attack, which took place approximately 40km (25 miles) from Maiduguri, the main city in north-eastern Borno state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The death toll is yet to be confirmed but the military has acknowledged it took place in the village of Bulabulin, on the road between Maiduguri and Damboa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The army, which often downplays its losses, said in a statement that only two soldiers had been killed as well as 17 militants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap), a Boko Haram faction, said it was behind the attack, saying 40 soldiers were killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The splinter group has carried out a number of devastating attacks this year, killing 81 people in the village of Gubio in June, as well as striking the garrison town of Monguno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Militant Islamist group Boko Haram and its offshoots have waged a brutal insurgency in Nigeria since 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Islamist militants launched a deadly ambush on Nigerian soldiers who were travelling on Tuesday on a key highway that re-opened in January after being closed last year because of frequent attacks. Thirty-five soldiers are reported to have been killed in the attack, which took place approximately 40km (25 miles) from Maiduguri, the main city in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-naija-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Nigerian-Soldiers-Ambushed.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}