Boko Haram Group Denies Truce With Nigerian Government

Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist group released a new video denying it had agreed a truce with the government and started talks to free abducted schoolgirls.

“It is a lie and we will never do any peace deal,” a man claiming to be the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said in a video released late yesterday to reporters in the northern city of Kano. “There is not going to be any peace deal even in the future.”

Nigerian authorities said on Oct. 17 they had agreed a cease-fire with Boko Haram, a group which President Goodluck Jonathan said has killed more than 13,000 people in its five-year campaign to impose Shariah, or Islamic rule, in Africa’s most populous country and biggest oil producer. Since the announcement, gun and bomb attacks by the insurgents have continued, killing scores of people in Nigeria’s majority-Muslim north.

While the government said talks mediated by Chadian President Idriss Deby were continuing to release the more than 200 girls the group abducted in April, Boko Haram denied involvement in any negotiation with either Nigeria, Chad, Niger or Cameroon. The schoolgirls have converted to Islam and married the militants, the group said.

Boko Haram is also holding a German national it seized in the northeastern town of Gombi in July, according to the video.