Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram has sworn allegiance
to the "Islamic State" (IS). The group is the latest in a string of
militant organizations to lend their support to the terrorist group.
In a tweet posted on Boko Haram's Twitter account on Saturday, Boko
Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau
purportedly pledged allegiance to IS,
which currently rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and
Syria.
"We announce our allegiance to the caliph ... and will hear and obey
in times of difficulty and prosperity," SITE Intelligence monitoring
service quoted Boko Haram as saying in a video alleged to be from the
Sunni group.
Boko Haram has captured several villages in Nigeria's northeast since
launching military operations in 2009 and now controls an area roughly
the size of Belgium.
On Saturday, bomb blasts in the northeastern Nigerian city of
Maiduguri killed at least 50 people. They were the worst attacks there
since Boko Haram militants tried to seize the town in two major assaults
earlier this year.
In their six-year insurgency, the Islamist militants have killed more
than 13,000 people, displaced more than 1.5 million, and abducted
hundreds, including at least 200 schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of
Chibok.
The group's rapid growth over the past year has alarmed Nigeria's
neighbors, who reached an agreement in February to deploy a
multinational force of some 8,700 soldiers in the region around Lake
Chad.
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