Jihadists reported to be linked to the Islamic State group killed dozens of people in the latest of a spate of bloody attacks in northeast Nigeria, local sources said Sunday.

Inhabitants of remote Goni Usmanti village told AFP that fighters gunned down 38 people in a raid on Saturday and set a truck ablaze killing an unknown number of passengers.

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At least three people died in the tension-prone Gedo on Wednesday after fierce clashes between Jubaland Regional Forces and the al-Shabaab militants, reports indicate, in the fight that lasted for a couple of hours.

Five others were critically injured during the battle and have since been taken to hospitals, officials said, but the al-Shabaab militants who were arrested are set to be presented to authorities for trial over war crimes in the Gedo region.

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At least 81 people were killed in an attack on a village by suspected Boko Haram militants in northeast Nigeria, the Borno state government said in a statement released to CNN Wednesday.

Residents said the men attacked the village in armored tanks and trucks filled with guns, according to the government’s statement.

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Libya’s internationally-recognised government has promised to retake the country’s east after launching an offensive to capture the strategic city of Sirte from the eastern-based forces of renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar.

On Saturday, forces allied with the Government of National Accord (GNA) launched the offensive to seize Sirte, a key gateway to the country’s main oil fields in the east, from Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) forces which took the city in January.

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Droukdel was killed on Thursday near the Algerian border, where the group has bases from which it has carried out attacks and abductions of Westerners in the sub-Saharan Sahel zone, Parly said.

“Many close associates” of Droukdel – who commanded several affiliate jihadist groups across the lawless region – were also “neutralised”, she added.

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