(Bloomberg) -- At least 42 fighters aligned with the Islamic State West Africa Province were killed in Nigeria on Friday and several wounded after troops launched an offensive in the Lake Chad area of country’s northeast.
One Nigerian soldier was killed and 10 were wounded in the operation led by the Multinational Joint Task Force, military spokesman Timothy Antigha said in an emailed statement Saturday. It was the heaviest loss inflicted on the group known as Iswap in six months, he said.
The raid came after five Iswap fighters were killed and one captured earlier in the week following a failed attempt to attack a military base in Ngouma, Cameroon, Antigha said.
Nigeria has been battling a 10-year Islamist insurgency in the country’s northeast. Largely defeated in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is rebuilding in Africa, where it has more than 6,000 fighters, according to the Combating Terrorism Center. The biggest cell is Iswap, which has 3,500 members according to the CTC, most of them in Nigeria’s northeast.
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