Boko Haram publishes new video showing its members celebrating Sallah in Sambisa Forest

BOKO Haram has published a recent Youtube video showing hundreds of its members celebrating the recent Sallah festivities in Sambisa Forest where they observed prayers to mark the end of the Muslim Ramadan fasting period.

In the video the insurgents, who reportedly belonged to the Sheikh Abubakar Shekau’s faction of Boko Haram, were spread out on a field, observing the Eid-el-Fitr prayers. Also, the nine-minute video shows a terrorist, bearing the sect’s flag and training on a horse inside the forest and captures a child terrorist, about 12 years old, bearing an AK-47 rifle and pledging allegiance to the insurgents.

“My message to all the infidels of this world, listen. You are saying you have finished us but it is a lie, we are here and you have not finished us and now you will begin to see us as we have just started this war,” the child terrorist said.

Nigeria's chief of army staff, Lt General Tukur Buratai, however, reiterated that his men had captured the Sambisa Forest area, noting that troops had recorded success in the fight against insurgency in the northeast. He gave this assurance on Friday in a briefing to mark the army’s 154th anniversary at the Nigerian Army Headquarters, Abuja.

General Buratai added: “We are looking at a theme, sustaining the successes of the Nigerian Army in tackling contemporary and emerging security challenges. We deliberately choose to reflect on the successes recorded by the army in the fight against insurgency in the northeast and the liberation of all parts of the country, hitherto claimed by the Boko Haram terrorists, and the eventual collapse of the once dreaded Sambisa Forest are clear testimonies to this fact.”