The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) Thursday said troops deployed to different theatres of operations across the country neutralised 974 terrorists and arrested 621 others in the month of February.
The military high command also said it rescued 466 kidnapped hostages in the period under review.
Director Defence Media Operations Major General Edward Buba disclosed this while briefing journalists in Abuja.
He said the criminal elements were killed during synchronised strikes between the ground and air forces on terrorists’ enclaves.
The defence spokesperson said troops recovered 1,573 assorted weapons, 23,345 assorted ammunitions and denied the oil thieves crude estimated worth the sum of N8billion (N8,006,996,894.00) during the period.
He gave the breakdown thus: “640 AK47 rifles, 248 locally fabricated guns, 93 pump action guns, 168 dane guns, 15,120 rounds of 7.62mm special ammo, 6,102 rounds of 7.62mm NATO, 512 rounds of 9mm and 2,132 live cartridges.
“Others are 8,993,245 litres of stolen crude oil, 1,062,635 litres of illegally refined AGO, 18,950 litres of DPK and 45,950 litres of PMS amongst other item.”
Speaking further, General Buba said notable terrorist warlords were killed during the period under review by troops of Operation HADARIN DAJI.
“Ashiru SHIRU and Kachambi, both loyalists of Jimmo ‘Smally’ were neutralised early February 24 by troops in conjunction with vigilantes around Faru, Maradun LGA,” he said.
…Over 40 worshippers kidnapped in Zamfara
Meanwhile, Blueprint gathered that about forty Muslim faithful were abducted by armed bandits in a mosque in Tsafe, the headquarter of Tsafe local government area of Zamfara state.
The terrorists, the source said, swooped on the worshippers at about 5.00am when they(faithful) were about commencing the early morning prayers (Subh).
Narrating his experience, the source who craved anonymity, said: “They came from nowhere after we had gathered for the Subh prayer that should be something around 5.00am. They rushed into the mosque and everyone was in fear following a strong instruction everyone there should follow them. Luck, however, smiled on me and a few others, as we just managed to escape. Not less than 40 people were abducted.
“The fear of being killed really took the better of all of us, that is the truth. They were looking so weird with arms and nobody could dare them.”
One of our correspondents gathered that while the vigilante group was on the heel of the abductors, the police spokesman in the state ASP Yazid Abubakar could not be reached at the time of this report.
