A militant group in Nigeria’s oil heartland of the Niger Delta has threatened secession from the West African country.

The move came as attacks on oil pipelines continue to deplete Nigeria’s output.

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), which carried out its first attack in February, issued a statement Thursday calling on the international community to “speak up against this ongoing terror and come to the aid of the Niger Delta.” The NDA is the latest in a series of militant groups in the Niger Delta to have complained that the benefits of the region’s vast oil resources have not been equally distributed among its citizens.

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Troops aligned with Libya’s government have fought “Islamic State” (IS) forces to take back control of the port of Sirte. The brigades are part of an operation backed by Libya’s UN-recognized administration.

Militias with fighters from Misrata looped around to the seafront to capture Sirte’s port, which lies around five kilometers (three miles) east of the city center.

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ISIL fighters were retreating from their main bastion in Libya on Thursday, as militiamen allied to a UN-brokered unity government pushed into the central city of Sirte.

Some extremists reportedly shaved off their beards to escape while the pro-government fighters, mostly from the western Libyan city of Misurata, pushed into the city centre in their tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

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Al-Qaeda-linked militants said they raided a base used by Ethiopian troops in central Somalia, killing at least 60 people. An African peacekeeping force said it repulsed the Islamists’ assault and inflicted dozens of casualties.

Al-Shabaab detonated a car-bomb at the base in the town of Halgan in Hiran region, before fighters stormed the facility, the group said in a statement published on the website of Radio Andalus, a broadcaster that supports its insurgency.

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A Libyan militia group said Saturday it recaptured a strategic airbase south of Sirte from Islamic State (IS) militants, local media reported.

The Gardabiya airbase, just 12 miles south of IS-controlled stronghold Sirte, was retaken on Saturday afternoon, according to the Libya Observer news website.

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Thirty-two troops have been killed in a clash with Boko Haram jihadists on Niger’s border with Nigeria, Niger’s defence ministry said on Saturday.

“Hundreds of assailants” attacked a military post at Bosso on Friday evening, it said in a statement that gave a “provisional toll” of 30 Nigerien and two Nigerian soldiers killed and 67 wounded.

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Al-Qaeda’s North African branch has claimed attacks in northern Mali that killed a Chinese UN peacekeeper and three civilians, the US-based monitoring group SITE said Wednesday.

The attacks on Tuesday come days after five UN peacekeepers were killed in an ambush in central Mali, as concern grows over the future of the UN’s deadliest active mission.

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