Jihadist groups are increasingly carrying out drone strikes in West Africa, raising alarm that they are building the capacity to wage a "war from the skies".
A leading violence monitoring organisation, Acled, has recorded at least 69 drone strikes by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023, while two Islamic State (IS) affiliates have carried out around 20 - mostly in Nigeria, which has been battling numerous insurgent groups for almost 25 years.
The latest drone attack took place in Nigeria's north-eastern Borno state on 29 January, when jihadists carried out a two-pronged assault - with multiple armed drones and ground fighters - on a military base.
The military said nine of its soldiers were killed in the attack by the Islamic State of West Africa Province (Iswap) - identified by Acled as the "most prolific" IS African affiliate in "drone warfare".
The jihadists tended to carry out strikes with "commercially available, relatively inexpensive quadcopter [unmanned] drones" that were "rigged with explosives", while also using them for reconnaissance and surveillance missions in preparation for ground attacks, Acled senior Africa analyst Ladd Serwat told the BBC.
