According to AFP, ISIS has now accepted the allegiance of Boko Haram. Find the report below...
The Islamic State group has welcomed a pledge of allegiance to it
made by the Nigerian jihadist organisation Boko Haram, according to an
audiotape Thursday purportedly from its spokesman.
We
announce to you to the good news of the expansion of the caliphate to
West Africa because the caliph... has accepted the allegiance of our
brothers of the Sunni group for preaching and the jihad," IS spokesman
Mohammed al-Adnani said in the message, using the Arabic name for Boko
Haram. Continue...
Itself a radical Sunni Muslim movement, IS has seized
large swathes of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic "caliphate"
there, and has also drawn expressions of allegiance from jihadists in
Egypt and Libya.
On Saturday, an audiotape attributed to Boko
Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said "we announce our allegiance to the
Caliph of the Muslims, Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim Al-Husseini Al-Qurashi," referring to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Shekau has previously mentioned Baghdadi in video messages yet stopped short of pledging formal allegiance.
But
there have been increasing signs that the Nigerian militants, whose
six-year insurgency has claimed more than 13,000 lives and left 1.5
million people homeless, have been seeking a closer tie-up.
IS spokesman Adnani urged Muslims to join militants in West Africa and insisted that the caliphate was growing.
"Our
caliphate is resisting and it is advancing in the right direction. We
are fighting the Crusaders and the rafidah (Shiites) and day by day the
Islamic State is becoming strong," he said.
He insisted that the jihadist group is "sure of its victory" regardless of the challenges it is facing.
For
months, IS has been targeted with air strikes from a coalition led by
the United States and suffered territorial setbacks in Syria and Iraq.
And Iraqi government forces have closed on the city of Tikrit this week in a bid to retake it from the group.
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