MAIDUGURI, April 26 (Reuters) - Militants overrun an army
base in northeastern Nigeria, killing more than 30 soldiers
before pulling back in the face of air strikes, sources said.
The attackers were believed to belong to the regional
offshoot of Islamic State. They hit the base in Mainok town in
northeast Borno state on Sunday afternoon, three soldiers and a
local resident told Reuters.
Rising insecurity across Nigeria has killed scores of
soldiers and civilians this year. Just over a month ago, about
30 soldiers were killed in four attacks by Islamist militants in
northeast Nigeria.
A military spokesman reached by phone said they would issue
a statement on the incident but declined to comment further.
The sources told Reuters that 33 soldiers were killed in
Sunday's attack. The militants wore military camouflage and
arrived in around 16 gun trucks and six mine-resistant military
vehicles, one of the soldiers said. After several hours, they
captured the base and soldiers called in airstrikes.
More soldiers were killed when militants ambushed
reinforcements sent to help, the soldier sources said. A
resident said the attackers also set ablaze the town's police
headquarters.
"I saw them while fighting with soldiers," resident Ba Umar
Abba Tuja told Reuters. "When the fighter jet started hovering
in the air, the (militants) fled to the community and hid in the
primary school."
Tuja said the militants left around midnight.
Mainok is roughly 55 km (30 miles) from Maiduguri, the
capital of Borno state. An Islamist insurgency has plagued
northeast Nigeria for more than a decade, killing more than
30,000 people and displacing at least 2 million.
Islamic State West Africa Province, which broke away from
Boko Haram several years ago, now stages its own attacks on
soldiers and civilians in the region.