Nigeria's Boko Haram Leader Abubakar Shekau "Badly Wounded": Report

Abubakar Shekau's Boko Haram faction and fighters from the ISIS West Africa Province had been battling in northeastern Borno state.

Nigerian Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has been seriously wounded after trying to kill himself to avoid capture during clashes with rival ISIS-allied jihadists in the north of the country, two intelligence sources said Thursday. Shekau's Boko Haram faction and fighters from the ISIS West Africa Province had been battling in northeastern Borno state, where ISWAP militants have become the dominant force in Nigeria's more than decade-long jihadist insurgency. Shekau, who made international headlines when his men kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, has been reported dead several times since Boko Haram first began its insurgency in 2009. After a series of clashes, Shekau and some of his fighters were surrounded on Wednesday by ISWAP jihadists in Boko Haram's Sambisa forest stronghold, where they demanded he surrender, one intelligence source said.