Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has carried out 112 attacks in Nigeria out of 517 attacks around the world in the past 81 days.
This comes after the Pentagon warned that ISIS is taking over swathes of Africa like it did in Syria and Iraq with “staggeringly brutal” tactics
Other countries listed are Iraq (162), Syria (106), Egypt (30), Afghanistan (68), DRC (18), Niger (9), Pakistan (7), Tunisia (2), Chad (1), Mali (1) and Somalia (1).
According to West Point, the US officer training academy, the group’s expansion and regrouping on the continent shows “Islamic State is far from defeated.”
“ISIS in West Africa is engaging in operations that are increasingly audacious, staggeringly brutal, and worryingly akin to what ISIL, as it was known at the time, was doing early 2014,” it said.
By the summer of 2020, it had become resolutely clear that the Islamic State was a changed organisation, but by no means a beaten one, the report published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Centre said.
The Pentagon report said there had been a “marked upward curve of claimed cumulative attacks and casualties” across Africa, but the “largest and most sophisticated” presence is in West Africa and the Greater Sahara.
The group has killed thousands and displaced millions in North East Nigeria.
