Multi-nation African force kills top militant near Lake Chad

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – A multinational African military force says it has killed a commander of the extremist group, Islamic State West African Province, in an airstrike.

Amir Khalifa Umar, an influential leader of the group was “eliminated” in an attack on one of the insurgents’ hideouts near Lake Chad known as Tunbums Sabon, said Col. Timothy Antigha, chief of public information for the Multinational Joint Task Force.

Umar, the third-ranked leader of the group, was killed in “ongoing offensive operations against the Islamic State West Africa Province and other purveyors of violence and instability in the Lake Chad Basin,” said Antigha.

Three other extremists were killed in a separate airstrike, said Antigha.

The multinational African military force includes soldiers from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria and works to end to the exremist Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria and the surrounding Lake Chad region.