Nigeria’s secret police on Saturday said they had arrested a dozen suspects linked to the discovery of “sleeper cells” operated by Boko Haram Muslim militants in and around the capital, Abuja.
The Nigerian Department of State Services (DSS) said those arrested had traveled from the restive northeast of the nation to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and were planning on staging attacks in Abuja during the year-end festivities.
“Boko Haram ... has continued to establish and operate sleeper cells whose [sole] mandates are to conduct surveillance and carry out subsequent attacks in the FCT,” the DSS said in a statement.
The statement listed the names of 12 suspected Boko Haram members, including a Niger national, who were arrested in Abuja and neighboring towns between Oct. 29 and Tuesday last week.
The suspects hid in plain sight, often working in legal jobs while carrying out surveillance to “map out soft targets for attacks,” the statement added.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Abuja in recent years in attacks blamed on Boko Haram, including a 2011 bombing of a UN building, which left 25 dead.
Overall, the group’s six-year old insurgency has killed about 17,000 people and displaced 2.5 million others, mostly in Nigeria. Despite a regional military offensive against Boko Haram this year, its fighters have continued to stage guerrilla-style attacks in Nigeria and neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has given his military commanders until the end of the year to end the insurgency, although he has admitted suicide and bomb attacks might continue.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not