Inside Story: Why is Boko Haram teaming up with ISIL?

“The victims were well targeted because they were all residents of Gwargware village… who fled to Miringa some months ago to escape forced conscription by Boko Haram.”

Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege, reporting from Abuja, said Boko Haram had embarked on a “really bloody 72 hours in Borno State”, and the worst of the attacks had taken place in Kukawa, 180km northeast of Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeast Nigeria.

The spate of attacks follow a directive from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group for fighters to increase attacks during Ramadan.

Boko Haram this year became ISIL’s West African franchise.

The Nigerian group, whose birthplace is Maiduguri, often defiles mosques where it believes imams espouse too moderate a form of Islam.

An estimated 13,000 people killed in the 6-year-old insurgency.

Amnesty International puts the toll at 17,000 dead. Another 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes.

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