Skip to footer

Four dead after Boko Haram attempts jailbreak

Boko Haram appears to have attacked a prison in southern Niger for the second time this year, in a thwarted effort to free imprisoned members of its group.

|
REUTERS/Joe Penney
Vendors sell goods at the main market in Diffa, March 23, 2015. Diffa is where Nigerien and Chadian troops fighting insurgent group Boko Haram are based at.
  • By Abdoulaye Massalaki Reuters

| Niamey, Niger

Suspected Boko Haram militants launched an attack on the prison in the southern Niger town of Diffa late on Saturday, military sources said, in an apparent bid to free fellow members of the Nigerian Islamist group held there.

Three of the assailants and one soldier were killed before the attack was repelled, the sources said. Boko Haram also attacked the prison in February.

"When the attack was repelled, the assailants fled, probably back into the town," one military source said. "We are searching for them."

A second military source said the attackers may have been residents of Diffa, as no one had seen them enter the town.

Boko Haram is seeking to carve out an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. Despite losing territory to an offensive by regional militaries this year, Boko Haram has carried out a wave of deadly attacks in Nigeria, Chad and Niger in recent weeks.

The group has sworn allegiance to Islamic State, which has declared an Islamic caliphate in the large parts of Iraq and Syria that it controls.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Four dead after Boko Haram attempts jailbreak
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2015/0712/Four-dead-after-Boko-Haram-attempts-jailbreak
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe