page_title: Boko Haram insurgency
section_title: 2017
hierarchical_section_title: Boko Haram insurgency / History / 2017
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Réfugiés nigérians à Maiduguri en août 2016.
context_page_description: The Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, when the jihadist group Boko Haram started an armed rebellion against the government of Nigeria. The conflict takes place within the context of long-standing issues of religious violence between Nigeria's Muslim and Christian communities, and the insurgents' ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in the region.
  Boko Haram's initial uprising failed, and its leader Mohammed Yusuf was killed by the Nigerian government. The movement consequently fractured into autonomous groups and started an insurgency, though rebel commander Abubakar Shekau managed to achieve a kind of primacy among the insurgents. Though challenged by internal rivals, such as Abu Usmatul al-Ansari's Salafist conservative faction and the Ansaru faction, Shekau became the insurgency's de facto leader and mostly kept the different Boko Haram factions from fighting each other, instead focusing on overthrowing the Nigerian government. Supported by other jihadist organizations including al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab, Shekau's tactics were marked by extreme brutality and explicit targeting of civilians.
context_section_description: On 7 January 2017, a group of Boko Haram militants attacked a Nigerian army base in Yobe State, killing five soldiers. In response, the Nigerian Army launched retaliatory strikes and killed 15 militants.
  On 17 January 2017, a Nigerian Air Force jet accidentally bombed a refugee camp near the Cameroonian border in Rann, Borno State, mistaking it for a Boko Haram encampment. The airstrike left 115 people dead.
  On 18 March 2017, at least six people were killed and 16 wounded after four female suicide bombers blew themselves up on the outskirts of Maiduguri city.
  On 22 March 2017, the Nigerian Department of State Services (DSS) announced that a suspected member of Boko Haram had been arrested in northeastern Yobe State. The suspect confessed details of a plot to attack the American and British embassies, and other western targets in Abuja. The DSS also later announced that between 25 and 26 March 2017, five suspected members of Boko Haram had been arrested, thus thwarting the plot.
  On 2 April 2017, the Nigerian military began what it said was its "final offensive" to retake Boko Haram's last strongholds.
  On 17 May 2017, the Nigerian Army reported that it had arrested about 126 suspected Boko Haram terrorists at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Damboa, Borno State.
  In September 2017, Boko Haram militants kidnapped about 40 young adults, women and children and killed 18 in the town of Banki, 130 km southeast of Maiduguri, Borno State, on the border of Nigeria and Cameroon. Boko Haram was reported to have killed 380 people between April and September 2017 in the Lake Chad area . About 57% of all schools in Borno state were closed due to the Boko Haram insurgency, affecting the education of about 3 million children.
  In December 2017, fighters who were believed to belong to ISWAP attacked a patrol of US Army Special Forces and Nigerian soldiers in the Lake Chad Basin Region in Niger. The coalition troops managed to repel the assault without suffering any casualties.
caption: Refugees of the conflict at Maiduguri
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