Suspected Boko Haram militants have ambushed and killed nine local security volunteers and a farmer in northeastern Nigeria, volunteers and police authorities confirmed on Friday.
The victims were members of the state-backed Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), a volunteer force recruited across Borno State to support the military’s campaign against jihadist insurgents.
According to reports, the vigilantes were ambushed on Thursday while responding to the killing of a farmer outside Warabe, in Gwoza district near the Cameroon border.
“I personally counted seven bodies belonging to our CJTF members and one farmer,” a senior militia commander in Warabe told AFP, recalling the aftermath of the deadly ambush.
“Then this morning, when we searched the bush, we found two more corpses,” he added.
A police officer in Gwoza district also confirmed the attack, saying the suspected jihadists killed a total of 10 people.
The attack comes barely a week after fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram rival faction, ambushed a military convoy and killed a brigadier general — the highest-ranking officer lost to the conflict since 2021.
Another CJTF member, Musa Iliya, said the militants “killed seven” of his colleagues during the attack, adding that “eight others are missing.”
Warabe is located near the Mandara Mountains — one of the oldest strongholds of Boko Haram and ISWAP fighters along the Cameroon border.
Meanwhile, in a related development, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Nigeria’s National Security Advisor, Nuhu Ribadu, urging the country to take decisive steps to curb rising violence targeting Christians, the Pentagon announced Friday.
Hegseth urged Nigeria to “take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, adding that Washington seeks to partner with Abuja “to deter and degrade terrorists that threaten the United States.”
The high-level meeting followed recent remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump, who warned that Christianity faces “an existential threat” in Nigeria and cautioned that the United States would respond militarily if the killings continue, saying any response would be “fast, vicious, and sweet.”
Nigeria — with its population of 230 million — remains almost evenly split between a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north.
The country continues to battle overlapping conflicts, from jihadist insurgencies that target both Christians and Muslims, to recurring clashes between mostly Muslim herders and predominantly Christian farmers competing for dwindling land and water.
However, experts warn that many of the conflicts in north-central Nigeria are fundamentally driven by shrinking land resources caused by expanding populations and climate change, even though they often take on religious undertones.
