MAIDUGURI: Fighters in northeast Nigeria killed 18 troops, including a brigadier general, in an assault on a military base, local government and intelligence sources said on Thursday, the second killing of a high-ranking officer in five months.

Violence is surging across the country’s mostly Muslim north, with at least 90 people killed by gunmen in several remote villages since Sunday night, according to a tally of tolls given by local, humanitarian and church sources.

Africa’s most populous country has been fighting an insurgency for 17 years, since Boko Haram’s 2009 uprising, which has seen the emergence of powerful splinter groups including IS-West Africa Province (ISWAP).

Four sources, including the military confirmed the overnight attack, with one intelligence source putting the death toll at 18. Unidentified fighters overran the military base, killed 18 soldiers and torched vehicles in Benisheikh, about 75 kilometres (47 miles) from Borno state capital Maiduguri, the source said.

“Unfortunately, the brigade commander, Brigadier General O.O. Braimah, lost his life,” Kaga local government chairman Zannah Lawan Ajimi said.

His death follows the killing of Brigadier General Musa Uba by ISWAP in November. He was the highest-ranking military official to die in the long-running conflict since 2021.

“They overran the brigade,” one of the intelligence sources said. The second intelligence source said that “the terrorists killed several troops” and “burnt vehicles and buildings before they withdrew”, without giving a toll.

Nigeria’s military said that “insurgents attempted to breach the defensive perimeter of the military installation” but were “decisively engaged and forced to retreat in disarray”.

The statement, from Major General Michael Onoja, a defence headquarters spokesman, said that the attack “resulted in the loss of a few brave and gallant soldiers”, without disclosing who was killed.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2026