A humanitarian aid worker and two local officials have been abducted by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters in conflict-plagued northeastern Nigeria, two security officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Jihadists kidnapped them at a checkpoint in the village of Wakilti in Borno state on Monday, the sources told AFP, in the latest incident in a region that has been in the grip of an Islamist insurgency for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
"The hostages included two local officials and an aid worker, but it is not clear which organization he works for," one security source said.<\/p>\n
The two officials were returning to the regional capital, Maiduguri, from the town of Mobbar, where they had gone for local elections held on the weekend, the second source said.<\/p>\n
In June, five humanitarian workers were killed a few days after being abducted by ISWAP, whose stronghold is on the edge of Lake Chad.<\/p>\n
The local elections in Borno state were the first held since Boko Haram launched its insurgency in 2009.<\/p>\n
In the bloodshed since, more than 36,000 people have been killed and over 2 million have fled their homes.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Boko Haram splintered into two groups, the Islamic State-affiliated ISWAP and one that remained loyal to historic leader Abubakar Shekau.<\/p>\n
The U.N. said the country's most violent attack took place Saturday, when Boko Haram fighters said they killed nearly 80 farmers in a rice field not far from Maiduguri, slitting the throats of many of the victims. <\/p>\n
Although officials initially said that 43 people had been killed in the attack, the U.N. later said searchers had recovered more bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A humanitarian aid worker and two local officials have been abducted by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters in conflict-plagued northeastern Nigeria, two security officials said Wednesday. Jihadists kidnapped them at a checkpoint in the village of Wakilti in Borno state on Monday, the sources told AFP, in the latest incident in a region […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}