Jihadist groups are increasingly carrying out drone strikes in West Africa, raising alarm that they are building the capacity to wage a “war from the skies”.
A leading violence monitoring organisation, Acled, has recorded at least 69 drone strikes by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023, while two Islamic State (IS) affiliates have carried out around 20 – mostly in Nigeria, which has been battling numerous insurgent groups for almost 25 years.
The latest drone attack took place in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state on 29 January, when jihadists carried out a two-pronged assault – with multiple armed drones and ground fighters – on a military base.
