{"id":5097,"date":"2014-09-03T14:13:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T07:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/?p=5097"},"modified":"2014-09-03T14:14:16","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T07:14:16","slug":"boko-haram-seizes-strategic-nigerian-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/boko-haram-seizes-strategic-nigerian-town\/","title":{"rendered":"Boko Haram seizes strategic Nigerian town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boko Haram have seized a strategic town in Nigeria&#8217;s far northeast, prompting denials from the military, as experts said the government risked losing control and the region was &#8220;on the brink&#8221; of takeover.<\/p>\n<p>Residents in Bama and a local politician said on Tuesday that 400 troops, some of them without weapons or boots, had fled after a military jet mistakenly bombarded the town&#8217;s barracks during intense fighting.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria&#8217;s military countered that it had pushed back the militants, who in recent weeks have moved from indiscriminate and retaliatory hit-and-run attacks to seizing strategic territory in Borno state.<\/p>\n<p>However, Ali Ndume, a Nigerian senator, said thousands of people were seen fleeing Bama, contradicting the military&#8217;s claims that they had repelled an attack on the town&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Nigeria News\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/africa\/2014\/09\/boko-haram-seize-strategic-nigerian-town-201492185035408733.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n<p>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa <a title=\"Nigeria\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/west-africa\/nigeria\/\">Nigeria<\/a> News<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boko Haram have seized a strategic town in Nigeria&#8217;s far northeast, prompting denials from the military, as experts said the government risked losing control and the region was &#8220;on the brink&#8221; of takeover. Residents in Bama and a local politician said on Tuesday that 400 troops, some of them without weapons or boots, had fled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[258,256,3875,1646,355,413,257,4687,393,254,4692],"class_list":["post-5097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nigeria","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-ali-ndume","tag-bama","tag-boko-haram","tag-borno-state","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-nigeria-news","tag-south-africa-today","tag-west-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}