Militants brutally slaughter multiple victims in assault on a town in northeastern Nigeria

Jihadist Attack in Northeastern Nigeria Leaves Dozens Dead

A brutal jihadist attack in the town of Darul Jamal, located on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, has left at least 63 people, including five soldiers, dead. The attack, which occurred around 8:30 pm, involved jihadists arriving on motorbikes, firing assault rifles, and torching homes.

The area where the attack took place is under the control of a Boko Haram commander, Ali Ngulde, who is reported to have led the attack. It is worth noting that Jihadist violence has waned since the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, but militants continue to launch attacks across rural areas in the northeast.

The town of Darul Jamal hosts a military base, yet the attackers managed to carry out their assault, raising questions about the security measures in place. Residents who fled the attack reported finding bodies everywhere when they returned at dawn.

The resurgence in jihadist violence comes as neighboring Niger has pulled back from a key multinational task force and the Nigerian military has become stretched by a separate banditry crisis in the northwest. This economic situation under Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has reinforced the grievances that many armed groups feed off in rural areas, according to some analysts.

The Nigerian air force claims to have killed at least 35 jihadists near the border with Cameroon, but neither the army nor the air force responded to an AFP request for comment. The organization Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, along with the Counter Extremism Project, has initiated the project "The Deteriorating Security Situation in West Africa" to address this issue.

Hajja Fati, a mother of five, lost her brother in the attack and expressed her disappointment in the government's promise of safety. Governor Babagana Zulum stated that a newly established force called the Forest Guards is set to augment security personnel in the region.

It is important to note that Boko Haram has been waging an insurgency since 2009, causing around 40,000 deaths and forcing over two million people to flee their homes. Rival ISWAP split from Boko Haram in 2016, and since then, ISWAP overran at least 17 Nigerian military bases in that period, aided by an increased use of drones, night-time attacks, and foreign fighters.

According to Good Governance Africa, there was a resurgence in jihadist activity in the first six months of 2025, with around 300 attacks killing approximately 500 civilians, mostly by ISWAP. Many of the victims in the recent attack were families recently relocated from the Government Secondary School displacement camp in Bama, raising concerns about the safety of returning internally displaced persons to the countryside.