Boko Haram affected areas

Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters and their families have surrendered in Chad in the past month, security and UN sources said, in a sign the military campaign against them is making headway.

[Й] USAID is promoting an increasingly proactive monitoring approach to quickly report on the alarming conditions in newly accessible parts of northeastern Nigeria.

Renewed violence by a Boko Haram faction in Nigeria and Niger restores a deadly urgency to the conflict just as it seemed the militants were losing traction.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has faced an imposing array of security, political, economic, and crime-related challenges since his historic election win in March 2015, with the country officially entering into recession in August this year. However, one notable positive development has been a revamped counterinsurgency campaign against Boko Haram extremists in northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin area stretching into Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.

As many as 75,000 children will die over the next year in famine-like conditions created by Boko Haram if donors don't respond quickly, the UN Children's Fund is warning. That's far more than the 20,000 people killed in the seven-year Islamic uprising.

Nigeria's air force said it had killed some senior Boko Haram militants and believed it had fatally wounded the group's leader in a raid on the Islamists' northeast heartland.

The disputed leader of Boko Haram says he is still in charge of Nigeria's militant Islamist group despite a statement by so-called Islamic State that he had been replaced. Abubakar Shekau denounced the IS declaration of Abu Musab al-Barnawi as the leader in an audio message.

The United Nations has accused the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram of "almost unimaginable" violence and brutality in Nigeria. Stephen O'Brien, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator, said the militant group's actions had forced thousands to flee and left unprecedented numbers in need.

Nigeria's army on Sunday said it had freed more than 5,000 people held by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram during an operation over the weekend in the northeast of the country. Nigeria's army has over the last year, sometimes aided by troops from neighbouring countries, recaptured most of the territory that was lost to the group, Й .

Abdou Sidikou Issa, chief of staff for troops based in Niger's southern zone of Diffa, a region plagued by the Islamist militant group, said troops from Chad and Nigeria were involved in the operation.