Boko Haram

President Barack Obama sits down with more than 100 leaders at the United Nations on Sept. 29 to push ahead with the US-led campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group despite Russia's rival plan.

Islamist Boko Haram militants operating out of Nigeria raided a village across the border in southern Niger and massacred at least 15 civilians, Niger security sources said on Sept.25. 

Three bomb blasts on Sept.20 rocked the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the stronghold of Boko Haram Islamists, the army said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

"There were three improvised explosive devices explosions at Gomari and Ajilari general area in Maiduguri at about 7:21 pm (1821 GMT)," military spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement.    

Some 500,000 children have been forced to flee Boko Haram militants in the last five months after an upsurge in attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, the UN children's agency said on Sept.18.

A child bomber killed up to six people on Aug. 25 outside a bus station in the heartland of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in northeastern Nigeria.

Witnesses reported seeing a "young girl" trying to get into the station in the Yobe state capital Damaturu around 7:00 am and refusing to be searched by security guards at the gate before blowing herself up.

Trabzonspor?s star summer signing, Cameroonian midfielder Stephane M?bia, has ruled out Turkish media reports that his new club and the Turkish Foreign Ministry helped to save his family from clashes in his hometown in Cameroon. 

Boko Haram militants kidnapped 135 people and killed at least eight others in a raid in northern Cameroon, as the Islamists continued to strike beyond their strongholds in neighbouring Nigeria, police and local sources said on August 5.

The family of Cameroon's Stephane M'bia, a summer signing for Trabzonspor, is in safe hands after the football club requested that the Turkish Foreign Ministry bring the player's relatives to Turkey following a bloody attack on their village by Boko Haram.

The Nigerian army has freed 178 people being held hostage by Boko Haram including more than 100 children, it said late on August 2, following a series of deadly attacks by the jihadists in the country's restive northeast.

Chad reintroduced the death penalty just six months after its abolition on July 30, as legislators passed a stringent anti-terror bill in the face of a spate of deadly Boko Haram attacks.

After suffering two suicide bombings in a month, including one in a bustling market in the capital N'Djamena, Chad has beefed up security in recent weeks.