The military last one week continues to target the leadership and chain of command of the terrorist, insurgents and extremist undermining the security of citizens in the country, its spokesman said.
Major General Edward Buba, the Director Military Operations who disclosed this explained on Friday that the ongoing counter insurgency and counter terrorism operations is making the country safer each passing day that these evil forces are decimated.
“The armed forces is on course with it’s operations ,which are yielding encouraging results,” he assured.
He said that the operations of the last one week, resulted in 50 neutralized terrorists with 122 of them arrested. Troops also arrested 49 perpetrators of oil theft and rescued 182 kidnapped hostages. In the South South Zone of Nigeria where economic sabotage is rampant, troops denied oil theft of the estimated sum of One Hundred Twenty Eight Million Sixty Six Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty Five Naira (N128,066,825.00) only.
Furthermore, troops recovered 66 assorted weapons and 11,474 assorted ammunition. The breakdown as follows: one conqueror APC, one GPMG, one NSVT gun, one GT3 rifle, 25 AK47 rifles, 4 pump action gun, 2 locally made AK47 rifles, 3 locally made gun, one locally made revolver gun, 4 locally fabricated pistols and 4 long dane gun, 2 locally made hand grenades, one bandolier.
Others are: 574 rounds of 7.62mm NATO, 640 rounds of 7.62mm special ammo, 150 rounds of 12.7mm ammo, 5 rounds of 9mm ammo, 10,520 live cartridges, 5 vehicles, 27 mobile phones, 12 motorcycle, 3 boafeng radios, one Motorolla HHR, 3 bicycles, one solar panel, one solar charger controller, one radio receiver and the sum of N75,909,290.00 amongst other items.
Troops in the Niger Delta area destroyed 242 dugout pits, 49 boats, 78 storage tanks, one tricycle, 21 vehicles, 104 cooking ovens, 3 pumping machine, 7 outboard engine and 49 illegal refining sites. Troops recovered 151,850 litres of stolen crude oil, 48,630 litres of illegally refined AGO and 10,125 litres of DPK.
He said that the armed forces will continue to apply strong military pressure such as has been witnessed in the week. The terrorist and their cohorts would continue to suffer heavy casualties adding that It is in their interest to surrender as being done in the North East Zone of the country to avoid eventual destruction