kidnapping

ADF STAFF With bows, slingshots and spears in hand, the young villagers advanced in a line through a forest in the town of Pala in southwest Chad. As the early morning light sifted through the trees, some crawled through the undergrowth…

ADF STAFF Fighters from the Oromo Liberation Army rebel group took a woman named Alemetu from her home in Ethiopia’s Oromia region as she tried to sleep. She was taken to an abandoned school where 40 OLA fighters lived and was held…

ADF STAFF Gender-based violence and allegations of rape in the Central African Republic (CAR) have escalated in recent months, and locals are casting much of the blame on Russian mercenaries. More than 1,000 Russian mercenaries of the…

ADF STAFF Sitting in the ochre dirt courtyard of her home in Pala in southwest Chad, Béatrice Naguita stared blankly into the distance as she recounted her April 2023 ordeal. “Around 1:00 a.m., armed men came into my father’s house and…

ADF STAFF Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria killed 20 young men in one of a series of early June attacks in the mountainous Shiroro communities of Niger State. Witnesses in the town of Bassa said Boko Haram fighters attacked in broad…

ADF STAFF As kidnapping for ransom has become a source of income for terrorists and criminals in parts of the Lake Chad Basin, authorities say that several hundred victims remain in captivity. A new report from the Institute for Security…

ADF STAFF Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Gwabin Musa, has fond memories of his childhood in Sokoto. “Growing up as a kid in Nigeria, it was so peaceful,” he told the BBC during a video interview released on March 28.…

ADF staff | photos by afp/getty images When Interpol coordinated international raids under Operation Jackal, it targeted Black Axe, a Nigeria-based organized crime group. In the 2022 sweep, authorities arrested 75 people, searched 49…

ADF STAFF As Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces took control of the West Darfur capital of El Geneina last summer, a group of men entered the home of one woman and held her at gunpoint. “They said, ‘Are you going to take off your clothes, or…

ADF STAFF After months of relative calm, a surge of new attacks by the Islamic State-Mozambique (ISM) terror group is driving waves of people from their homes in the Cabo Delgado province. Thus far in 2024, more than 99,000 people,…