Militant attack leaves 25 soliders killed in Nigeria

Twenty-five soldiers were killed and nearly 1,000 people left homeless in a militant attack on a town in northeastern Nigeria, the government said in a statement. Six other soldiers were also wounded.

The militants entered Monguno in Borno state posing as a convoy of soldiers on Tuesday evening, the sources said. They then attacked troops inside the town, destroying at least 750 homes in the process.

Resident Gumati Sadu said people fled into the bush for safety during the fighting and that three civilians were killed by stray bullets.

A military spokesperson declined to comment.

Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) claimed responsibility for the attack on its Amaq news agency.

It said that one of its militants detonated a car bomb in the town, killing at least eight soldiers and destroying three armoured vehicles.

The group also said it had seized a vehicle, weapons and ammunition before leaving the town.

The attack comes after Chadian troops who are part of the Multinational Joint Task Force withdrew from Borno some days ago. There are worries that more attacks will be carried out against key targets in the state.

On Saturday, six soldiers were killed in an attack by Boko Haram near Jakana, a town 45 kilometres away from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, according to Maj. Gen. Olusegun Adeniyi. He called for the evacuation of Jakana and another village, Mainok.

Nigeria's President Muhammad Buhari had on Tuesday told citizens not to panic over the withdrawal of the Chadian troops.

The military has not yet officially commented on the soldiers' deaths in the latest attack on Monguno.

ISWAP split from Islamist group Boko Haram in 2016 and has since staged its own frequent attacks in the region.

Boko Haram's decade-long insurgency campaign has killed thousands and displaced millions in northeastern Nigeria.

Thousands in Monguno had already been displaced from their homes elsewhere in Borno state by militants. Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres warned last year that many thousands in Monguno lacked proper shelter, water, sanitation and food.

CBC

Conjoined twins successfully separated by 78-member team in Nigeria

Two sisters, who were joined in the chest and abdomen, have been successfully separated in a surgery by a 78-member team in Nigeria's capital, Abuja.

Mercy and Goodness Ede are now well enough to go home six weeks after surgery, according to pediatric surgeon Emmanuel Ameh, who led the team that performed the operation at the National Hospital.

The surgery to separate the twins happened in November last year but details have only just been released by the hospital, because they wanted to ensure there were no post surgery complications.

The girls are the first to be successfully separated at the government-run specialist center, National Hospital spokesman Dr. Tayo Haastrup told CNN.

It took around 13 hours for the team working from two operating theaters at the hospital to separate the twins, according to the hospital.

"We are just happy and proud that the team that worked on this surgery were all Nigerians. It was done in Nigeria and the parents didn't have to go outside the country," Haastrup said.

Haastrup said the surgery, which runs into thousands of dollars, was done free of charge to the parents, who work in menial jobs and would not have been able to afford the surgery.

A dangerous procedure 
 
The twins were born on August 13 last year but Ameh said the surgery was delayed until November because of some complications.

Separating conjoined twins is a complicated and dangerous procedure, and not all twins -- because of shared organs or other complications -- can be separated.

Aside from being joined at the chest, the Martins twins were born with a condition known as omphalocele, a birth defect that left a section of their intestine sticking outside their navel, Ameh told CNN.

Ameh said the girls underwent surgery to repair the area that had been torn open at the navel and doctors had to wait for many weeks for them to recover from the procedure.

They also had to manage a number of complications in the months leading up to the separation in November.

Ameh said plastic surgeons on the team were worried that a large section of the girls' chest would be open and at risk of being infected once they were separated and they had to create artificial skin large enough to cover the area, which took several weeks.

"We needed to determine if they could live independently when they are separated. We found out that they were sharing a diaphragm and one liver was serving both of them, but all other organs were separate," Ameh told CNN.

"We also had to get some medical equipment that were not available," he added.

According to a 2017 paper in the journal of Clinical Anatomy, conjoined twins are extremely rare, with an incidence of 1 in 50,000 births.

However, because around 60% of those cases are stillborn, the actual incidence rate is closer to 1 in 200,000 births, according to the study. About 70% of them are female.

CNN

Cardi B pledges to get Nigerian citizenship

 Cardi B's announcement that she wants to seek Nigerian citizenship has set off a Twitter feud between her West African fans in friendly rivals Nigeria and Ghana.

The Grammy-winning rapper visited both countries last month on her African tour.

Her announcement in a tweet on Friday criticized the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and sent Middle East tensions soaring.

"Its sad this man is putting Americans live in danger. Dumbest move Trump did till date ... I'm filing for my Nigerian citizenship," she tweeted.

Many in West Africa saw her tweet as proof that she preferred Nigeria.

Ghanaians were quick to point out the pitfalls of living in Africa's most populous nation, where traffic jams and power cuts are more visible than opulent nightclubs and luxury hotels.

"Hope you have a generator to power your house (because) they don't have light but we do," one user tweeted, adding an emoticon of a Ghana flag.

Some fans in Ghana expressed concern for her safety, warning about the Nigeria-based Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

Confusion, pride

But most Nigerian fans were quick to offer up a passport exchange, underscoring the mix of pride and confusion that the 27-year-old star would prefer Nigeria to America.

This week she asked fans to weigh in on whether her Nigerian name should be CHIOMA B or Cadijat.

Cardi B, who was born Belcalis Almanzar, is of Afro-Caribbean descent, tracing her roots to Trinidad and the Dominican Republic.

It was not immediately clear how the rapper might acquire citizenship in Nigeria, though a number of celebrities have recently been given honorary citizenship in other African countries.

British actor Idris Elba now has a passport from Sierra Leone, his late father's birthplace. And fellow rapper Ludacris recently acquired citizenship in Gabon after marrying a woman from the Central African nation.

AP

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