KANO: Eleven militia fighters working alongside Nigeria’s military to battle anti-government militants were killed in the country’s northeast on Saturday when their vehicle hit a landmine on a highway near the border with Cameroon.

Militants in Nigeria are increasingly resorting to planting mines on highways to target military and civilian convoys after they were pushed back from territory they once controlled during the early years of the country’s more than 15-year insurgency.

The militia fighters were escorting a civilian convoy from the town of Gamboru to Maiduguri when their vehicle drove over a landmine suspected to have been planted by militants at Damno village.

“The rear tyres of the vehicle carrying 13 of our comrades hit a wide pothole in which a landmine was buried and it exploded,” a spokesperson said. “Eleven people in the vehicle were killed while two escaped with injures.” The victims were removed from the remains of the vehicle and returned to Gamboru for burial. Nigeria’s militant conflict has gradually eased in intensity as the military carries out offensives against the militants.

The Gamboru-to-Maiduguri highway is a strategic 140-kilometre trade route in the region, and provides an important link with neighbouring Cameroon.

The highway was reopened in July 2016 after it was shut by the military for two years due to incessant attacks by militants.

Boko Haram and rival Islamic State West Africa Province still launch sporadic ambushes on convoys and plant landmines along the highway.

In January, 17 people were killed along the highway in two separate mine blasts that were blamed on militants. Ten more people were killed by a landmine earlier this month.

Nigeria’s grinding conflict has killed 40,000 and displaced around two million people from their homes in the northeast since 2009. The violence has spilled over into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

The recent military coups in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso and subsequent withdrawal of French and US troops from the Sahel to Nigeria’s north have heightened concerns over regional instability and violence extending further into coastal West African states.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2024