Key takeaways
- A mine near Kinuba, outside Gamboru Ngala, killed eight soldiers on October 17. Reuters later put the toll at 15, including five CJTF volunteers.
- The soldiers were guarding militia volunteers clearing roadside bush, the cover insurgents use to plant mines and stage ambushes.
- Defence sources quoted by AFP blamed ISWAP. The army has not published its own toll.
A Nigerian army pickup was driving through scrubland near the village of Kinuba, about 25 kilometres outside Gamboru Ngala in eastern Borno State, when it rolled over a buried mine on Saturday, October 17. All eight soldiers aboard were killed. They had been watching over local militia volunteers who were cutting back the thickets along the highway, the cover insurgents use to plant explosives and lie in wait, defence sources and a militia member told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The toll has since risen. Two soldiers told Reuters on Monday that at least 15 people died when the convoy struck the mine and then came under fire: 10 soldiers and five members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), the volunteer militia that fights alongside the army in Borno. The Nigerian outlet The Whistler, citing a battalion situation report, counted nine soldiers. The army has not published a figure of its own.
A mine, then gunfire
Ibrahim Liman, a militia member assisting the troops, told AFP the explosive had been laid on the dusty road and set off remotely with a detonating cord. A militia member supervising the bush clearing was wounded by shrapnel. In the account the two soldiers gave Reuters, the attack did not end with the blast: the convoy also came under fire, which may explain why the dead include CJTF volunteers and not only the eight soldiers in the first vehicle. Defence sources quoted by AFP blamed the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which operates along this stretch of the Cameroon border.
According to The Whistler, the situation report also listed a military vehicle, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher, four service rifles and a Vallon metal detector as destroyed or lost. The detector is not a small loss: on roads like this one, it is what soldiers rely on to find a mine before a vehicle does.
The pattern is familiar in the Lake Chad Basin. In April, Crisis.Zone reported on a militant attack on a Nigerian army base near the Chad border, in which a vehicle sent to reinforce troops also struck an IED.
Observers are reading: A reading of what the three casualty counts omit, and what that means for the volunteers who clear the Gamboru road.
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What can be said so far
What happened near Kinuba fits a pattern Borno knows well. ISWAP and Boko Haram increasingly plant mines on the highways, AFP reported, and the volunteers who clear the roadside bush are often the first to be exposed. Days before the blast, an attack on a military base had killed 15 soldiers and five militia members, and the army chief, Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, was in Maiduguri over that attack when the mine went off.
The road itself is the wider issue. It links Borno to Cameroon, and in Crisis.Zone's assessment airstrikes can hit insurgent positions but cannot clear a road of mines. The army has not commented publicly on either attack. Until it does, the toll of at least 15 that Reuters reported is best read as a minimum.
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