At least five members of an oil exploration team were killed and soldiers also died.

Army chiefs have now been ordered to relocate to the affected area.

The high number of casualties will be a blow for the government, which insists the insurgency is all but defeated.

At least 20,000 people have been killed and thousands more abducted since Boko Haram launched its insurgency in the city of Maiduguri, north-east Nigeria, in 2009.

In the most notorious abduction case, it seized 276 girls from a boarding school in the north-eastern town of Chibok in 2014.

It has since freed more than 100 of the girls, in exchange for the release of its fighters detained by Nigeria’s security forces.

‘Death toll mounting’

Details of what happened on Tuesday remain unclear, with initial reports from the army suggesting the abducted geologists and surveyors, who worked at the University of Maiduguri, had been rescued.

On Tuesday, the army said the bodies of nine Nigerian soldiers and a civilian had been recovered.

But now the university has said at least five members of staff, including two academics and a driver, were killed when the heavily armed convoy made its way back to Maiduguri, in north-east Nigeria.

Several others remain missing.

“We got the impression our staff on the team were rescued because that was what the military spokesman said yesterday,” Maiduguri University spokesman Dani Mamman said, quoted by AFP.

“But we were shocked when we were given four dead bodies. This means it wasn’t a rescue. We still have other staff that are yet to be accounted for.”

Sources told the BBC that more than 40 people, most of them soldiers and volunteers from a vigilante group, had been killed in total – although other sources suggest the number killed may rise further still.

“The death toll keeps mounting,” a source told AFP, adding: “More bodies are coming in.”

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Source: BBC

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They are said to have discussed changing the curriculum at private schools to favour the Islamist group’s ideology.

Each of the principals is responsible for around 1,000 students, ranging in age from seven to 15.

Al-Shabab has been waging a war against Somalia’s federal government for the last 10 years.

Mahad Hassan Osman, the information minister for the central Hir-Shabelle region, told the BBC’s Somali service that the teachers had been intercepted and arrested near the town of Jowhar.

”We arrested them 15km outside the town.

“They were attempting to change the school’s curriculum to suit what the group believes in, which is the implementation of strict Islamic law.”

The minister has said the teachers will be taken to court once an investigation has taken place.

Al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda, has been pushed out of Somalia’s main towns but still controls many rural areas.

The militant group launched its own curriculum in April, and produces school textbooks reflecting its Islamist agenda.

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Source: BBC

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