A militant group linked to al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for an attack in central Nigeria that killed a soldier, marking its first known operation inside the country.
The group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), said it carried out the assault in Kwara State in the early hours of Wednesday, targeting a military patrol and seizing weapons, ammunition, and cash.
The claim was released in a video posted on JNIM’s official Telegram channel late Thursday, featuring images of the alleged spoils from the raid.
A military source confirmed to Reuters that the attack occurred and that one soldier was killed during the ambush, though the Nigerian Army has yet to issue an official statement.
JNIM, which emerged in 2017 through the merger of several Sahel-based militant factions, is al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in West Africa. The group has carried out hundreds of attacks across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin, and has recently been linked to violence in the northernmost parts of Togo and Ghana.
Its expansion into Nigeria signals a potential geographical shift in regional militancy, as the country already faces long-running insurgencies by Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the northeast.
Security analysts say JNIM’s entry could complicate Nigeria’s counterterrorism landscape, given the group’s established networks across the Sahel and its ability to exploit porous borders.
In recent months, JNIM has intensified operations in the region, including a May 2025 attack in Burkina Faso’s Djibo that killed nearly 200 soldiers and a fuel blockade in Mali that crippled transportation and closed schools.
No official reaction has come from the Nigerian government, but President Bola Tinubu recently restructured the armed forces in a bid to enhance operational readiness against expanding militant activity in the north-central and northwest.
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