Nigeria Boko Haram: Militants 'technically defeated' - Buhari

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Image captionThe president says that key to the defeat of Boko Haram is reorganising, retraining and reequipping the army

Image copyrightAFP

Image caption

The Islamist insurgency has kept about one million children out of school in Nigeria and three neighbouring states, the UN children's agency said earlier this week

Nigeria has "technically won the war" against Islamist Boko Haram militants, President Muhammadu Buhari says.

He told the BBC that the militant group could no longer mount "conventional attacks" against security forces or population centres.

It had been reduced to fighting with improvised explosives devices (IED) and remained a force only in its heartland of Borno state, he said.

Boko Haram has been described as one of the world's deadliest terror groups.

Critics of the government argue that it has exaggerated the scale of its success against the militants, and that each time the army claims to have wiped out Boko Haram, the militants have quietly rebuilt.