Sadly, terror attacks leave over 600 dead

… In Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan…

Terrorist organisations that harbour anti-establishment, anti-West, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic ideologies have stepped up their attacks, recording sinful successes and forcing back the hand of the clock where successes seemed to have been recorded in the last few years.
In Nigeria, for instance, there have been more than five attacks in three weeks, an average of three attacks per week, each of them devastating. Casualty figures are not clear because the military is not forthcoming with them, but there are over 75 reported deaths with military personnel as victims as there are civilians.

In Pakistan, a terror group affiliated to the Taliban, called Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), carried out series of attacks aimed at disrupting the recently conducted elections, killing 212 civilians in seven attacks in the month of July alone. Also, in neighbouring Afghanistan, the Taliban has launched multiple attacks on several fronts, and in the last one week, more than 200 persons have been killed. The assault has continued as many soldiers and officers of the Afghan army have lost their lives. In the same vein, terror attacks carried out by Boko Haram have occurred in neighbouring Chad and Niger Republic, leaving dozens dead.
In Mali, the al-Qaeda affiliate, who are known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, known commonly as MUJAO, have begun to defy the French military, regrouping, attacking and acquiring more grounds to the point that its activities became an issue in the recent presidential elections. Two countries that are neighbours to Mali – Senegal and Burkina Faso – have raised an alarm over the activities of Jihadist groups who are believed to have been trained in Mali. Members of the al-Qaeda sects are said to have launched their campaign in parts of Burkina Faso and Senegal, and there are fears that these countries that have enjoyed relative peace would join the league of destabilised West African countries.
There is confusion in Nigeria in the counter-terrorism parlance as casualty figures are being disputed. In a recent outburst in the social media, one Danie G. Dashe claimed that his cousin, Lt Benjamin Dashe, was killed but the military failed to contact the family members to acknowledge that the 30-year-old army office who had just conducted his traditional marriage and was preparing for wedding, was killed by Boko Haram.
In the positing, Dashe alleged that, ““The most disturbing aspect is that Dashe was posted to Sambisa forest four months after passing out from the NDA in 2013 and was left there for 3 years and a half, against their rules of engagement that a soldier should not be at the war front for more than six months. He was redeployed to Lagos this January and posted back to sambisa again in April whereas so many of his contemporaries have never seen the battle field.”

The Justice for Jos Project coordinator, Emmanuel Ogebe, stated in a press release that “Lt Benjamin Dashe had just carried out his marriage introduction ceremony 3 months earlier. Worse still Lt. Dashe’s family were not notified of the death of their son three weeks after he was killed in action although social media was awash with the news. Out of desperation, the family dispatched a representative to Borno to go and ascertain the true fate of their son only to confirm that indeed it was true that he had died in combat.”

The New York Times reported the mayhem caused by Afghan forces thus: “Ninety miles west, in Ghazni Province, the Taliban seized control of the Ajristan District. The elite army commando unit that had been defending the district disappeared for two days, and their superiors were uncertain of their fate. When they found out on Sunday, estimates of the dead ranged from 40 to 100. Twenty-two survivors were carried to safety on donkeys by rescuers who found them lost in the mountains.
In Faryab Province, 250 miles to the northwest, an isolated Afghan National Army base of 100 soldiers lost more than half of its men in a Taliban assault that ended early Sunday morning. The defenders said they did not expect to last another night.
And 275 miles east of the Faryab base, in northern Baghlan Province, at a base at Jangal Bagh on the strategic highway between Pul-i-Kumri and Kunduz, insurgents killed seven policemen and nine soldiers and captured three other soldiers on Saturday…”