The leader of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) jihadist group, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, is dead, Chief of Defence Staff General Lucky Irabor, said on Thursday.
ISWAP has not given any confirmation of al-Barnawi’s death and the
army has claimed before to have killed jihadist commanders only for
them to reappear.
He did not give details on how or when al-Barnawi had died.
Al-Barnawi is the son of the founder of Nigeria’s Boko Haram militant
group which has been fighting a grinding Islamist insurgency in the
northeast since 2009.
The ISWAP commander rose to prominence after splitting with Boko
Haram in 2016 over differences with its commander Abubakar Shekau,
who died earlier this year during infighting between the two factions.
Since Shekau’s death, security sources say, al-Barnawi had consolidated
ISWAP’s control in the northeast and the Lake Chad region but pockets
of Boko Haram loyalists have been fighting back.
