(MENAFN) Soldiers from Niger’s military have killed a prominent leader of the Boko Haram jihadist faction, the West African nation's armed forces declared on Thursday.

The "notorious" Ibrahim Mahamadu, also known as Bakoura, was taken out during a "surgical operation" on Shilawa Island, located in Niger’s Diffa region within the Lake Chad Basin, close to the borders of Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon, according to a statement from the Nigerien Armed Forces.

The military detailed that "very early in the morning of August 15 an air force fighter aircraft launched three targeted and successive strikes on the positions Bakoura used to occupy in Shilawa." The assault also resulted in the deaths of several other militant commanders.

Diffa, situated in southeastern Niger, has long functioned as a base and refuge for the Boko Haram faction under Bakoura’s leadership.

Reports indicate that Bakoura relocated his fighters to islands within Lake Chad after declining to merge with the rival Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a group that split from Boko Haram in 2016 due to ideological and leadership conflicts.

According to the military, Bakoura, who is Nigerian by nationality, joined the terrorist organization more than 13 years ago and took command after the previous leader, Abubakar Shekau, was killed amid internal clashes in 2021.

Boko Haram’s insurgency originated in the 2000s in northeastern Nigeria, conducting attacks against the government with the goal of creating an Islamic caliphate in the region.

The group gained international notoriety in 2014 when its militants kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls from Chibok village in Borno State.

To counter the frequent cross-border incursions by Boko Haram fighters, the Lake Chad Basin nations—Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon—formed the Multinational Joint Task Force to coordinate military efforts and restore stability.

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