Boko Haram, now calling itself Islamic State West Africa, carried out a wave of deadly suicide bombings as a multilateral military alliance prepares to take the field against the jihadists.
Authorities in Chad announced the arrest of key Boko Haram leaders amid a wave of deadly suicide bombngs in the capital, N'Djamena.
The US State Department finds that the number of "terrorist attacks" around the world rose by a third in 2014, largely due to the expansion of ISIS and Boko Haram.
Amnesty International urged Cameroon to end the six-month detention of 84 children being held after raids on Koranic schools in a crackdown on Boko Haram.
Some 8,000 Nigerian civilians have been killed since 2011 in abuses by security forces, Amnesty International reports, accusing the military of crimes agaist humanity.
Over the past two months, the ISIS international franchise has made gains from West Africa to the Indian subcontinent, with militants in several countries proclaiming for the "caliphate."
Traffickers have established a dope-for-guns pipeline across the Sahel and Sahara, integrating Boko Haram into drug-smuggling networks that stretch to Asia.
Advance units of a thousands-strong Chadian intervention force arrived in Cameroon to fight Boko Haram rebels. A critical oil pipeline passes through the war-torn border.
Up to 2,000 are feared dead in an ongoing massacre after Boko Haram seized Baga, a town on Nigeria's border with Chad in Borno state. The town was reportedly "razed to the ground."
Royal Dutch Shell reached an $84 million settlement over Niger Delta oil spills, in what Amnesty International called "an important victory for the victims of corporate negligence."
Warplanes under the command of renegade Gen. Khalifa Haftar fired missiles at Misrata's rebel-held airport, as Libya's oil exports remain effectively paralyzed by civil war.
Internet and media slueths scramble to identify the faction behind the jihadist flag raised by the militant in the Sydney hostage crisis—which follows Austrailian air-strikes on ISIS.
