{"id":31466,"date":"2016-12-30T00:11:50","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T00:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/abubakar-shekau-boko-haram-has-not-been-crushed\/"},"modified":"2016-12-30T00:10:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T00:10:54","slug":"abubakar-shekau-boko-haram-has-not-been-crushed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/abubakar-shekau-boko-haram-has-not-been-crushed\/","title":{"rendered":"Abubakar Shekau: Boko Haram has not been crushed"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Abubakar Shekau appears in new video to say fighters are safe, rebutting victory claims by Nigeria’s president and army.}<\/p>\n

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a new video to challenge a claim by the Nigerian president and the army that the armed group had been routed from its last stronghold of Sambisa Forest .<\/p>\n

Shekau last appeared in a video in September where he disputed a claim by the Nigerian military that he had been wounded in battle.<\/p>\n

“We are safe,” he says in the 25-minute video, flanked by masked armed fighters, which appeared on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“We have not been flushed out of anywhere. And tactics and strategies cannot reveal our location except if Allah wills by his decree.”<\/p>\n

Referring to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who said on Christmas Eve that Boko Haram had been defeated and driven away from the forest, its last known bastion, Shekaku says: “You should not be telling lies to the people.<\/p>\n

“If you indeed crushed us, how can you see me like this? How many times have you killed us in your bogus death?”<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear where the new video was shot, but Shekau, who spoke in both Hausa and Arabic, said it was filmed on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

He pledged to continue fighting on until an Islamic state was imposed in northern Nigeria.<\/p>\n

“Our aim is to establish an Islamic Caliphate and we have our own Caliphate, we are not part of Nigeria,” he says.<\/p>\n

Buhari had announced that a sustained military campaign in the 1,300sq km Sambisa Forest in northeastern Borno state had led to the “final crushing of Boko Haram terrorists in their last enclave in Sambisa Forest”.<\/p>\n

The government in Abuja and the military frequently claim victories against Boko Haram.<\/p>\n

{{Nigerian army claims}}<\/p>\n

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday , Brigadier-General Victor Ezugwu, a Nigerian army commander, said his soldiers had made significant gains against Boko Haram.<\/p>\n

The army has claimed victory over Boko Haram in its stronghold, having captured the Sambisa Forest in the country’s east over the weekend.<\/p>\n

“We are on top of the situation, all hands are still on deck,” Ezugwu told Al Jazeera. “This defeat is final and it [Boko Haram] will not spread to other parts of West Africa.”<\/p>\n

Boko Haram’s campaign began in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, though it has since spread beyond Nigeria’s borders to Chad, Cameroon and Niger.<\/p>\n

Nearly 15,000 civilians have been killed since the armed rebellion was launched in 1999. The insurgency has forced some 2.6 million others to flee their homes since 2009.<\/p>\n

The violence has led to a dire humanitarian crisis in the region, with thousands of children facing the risk of famine and starvation.<\/p>\n

\"Nearly<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Abubakar Shekau appears in new video to say fighters are safe, rebutting victory claims by Nigeria’s president and army.} Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a new video to challenge a claim by the Nigerian president and the army that the armed group had been routed from its last stronghold of Sambisa Forest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31466"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31466"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}