Boko Haram has 6,000 hardcore militants – US Intelligence

The Boko Haram sect, which is fighting a violent insurgency in northeast Nigeria, has about 4,000-6,000 “hardcore” fighters, United States intelligence officials said on Friday.

In an assessment of the Book Haram sect, whose five-year uprising has included massacres and kidnappings from Nigeria into neighboring states, the officials said they did not believe it posed a major threat to Nigeria’s oil fields in the south.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Boko Haram militants were believed to be still holding about 300 schoolgirls they kidnapped early last year and had dispersed them to multiple locations.

Around 10,000 people were killed in Boko Haram attacks last year.

The group poses the biggest security threat in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer and biggest economy, Reuters says.

Concern over the insurgency appears to be one of the main reasons for a surge in political support for opposition leader, Muhammadu Buhari, in the February 14 election.

Many Nigerians believe Buhari, as a former military ruler, will be able to bolster the army’s hapless efforts to counter the insurgency, and that as a Muslim, he may even be able to take some of the wind out of Boko Haram’s ideological sails.

The officials said Boko Haram fighters had been engaging in both small-scale and larger attacks in recent weeks and they expected this mixed pattern of operations to continue during the election period.

The U.S intelligence officials said the Nigerian military forces were stretched thin in fighting the insurgents, as well as by their involvement in international peacekeeping forces.