A security source said the special forces, who carried out an aerial surveilance of the area, discovered a major camp of the insurgents some kilometers away from the Yobe State School of Agriculture, Gujba, where about 90 students were murdered on Sunday.
The source said that the operation was one of the biggest offensives of the Nigerian military against the Boko Haram since the declaration of the emergency rule by President Goodluck Jonathan in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.
Investigations revealed that three Alpha jets, several heavy artillery weapons and a large number of ground forces of the Division 7 of the Nigerian Army in Borno and Yobe states participated in the operation.
Although, the source could not give the casualty figure in the operation, he stated that the camp was one of the largest to have been discovered and could contain hundreds of insurgents.
It was further stated that the entire forest was engulfed in a thick fire as at the time of filing the reports.
A highly placed Defence Headquarters source said that the military devised “a strategy to box them in” to prevent them from escaping during the operation.
It was learnt that the men of the Joint Task Force in Yobe and those in Maiduguri were deployed simultaneously alongside three Alpha jets of the Nigerian Air Force during the Wednesday raid by the military.
The source said that the Nigerian military sustained the fierce attack on the terrorists’ enclave all through the operation that lasted several hours.
The source said, “The operation today was a massive one. Heavy artillery guns were deployed, Air Force, and ground troops from Borno and Yobe were deployed in large number.”
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