Report: T£rrorists deploy more drones as IS affiliates expand att∆cks

Report: Terrorists deploy more drones as IS affiliates expand attacks

Terrorists groups in West Africa are using more drones in attacks, raising fears they are now able to fight a “war from the skies”.

A BBC report, which quoted the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), noted two Islamic State (IS) affiliates carried out around 20 drone strikes, most of them in Nigeria.

Last year, TheCable reported that Ahmed Jaha, a member of the house of representatives, said Boko Haram insurgents are using drones in attacking residents in Borno state.

Jaha said the weapons used by the terrorists are more sophisticated than that of the Nigerian military.

Acled also noted that an al-Qaeda affiliate has conducted at least 69 drone attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023.

Ladd Serwat, a senior Africa analyst at Acled, told the BBC that the “jihadists tend to use commercially available, relatively inexpensive quadcopter [unmanned] drones” that are “rigged with explosives”.

He added that they also deploy drones for reconnaissance and surveillance to prepare for ground attacks.

Serwat said that the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has carried out 10 drone strikes since 2024 in north-eastern Nigeria, as well as in northern Cameroon, southern Niger, and southern Chad — regions affected by Nigeria’s insurgency.

A similar number of drone attacks have been carried out by another IS affiliate, the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), according to Acled data.

Nigeria has strict control over the import and use of commercial and hobby drones.

But Malik Samuel, a Nigeria-based senior researcher at the Good Governance Africa think-tank, said terrorists have managed to acquire them through smuggling networks across the region’s porous borders.

Samuel noted that jihadists use drones because they can “strike targets more effectively” while reducing their own casualties.

Taiwo Adebayo, a researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, had warned that West African militaries must carry out “preemptive strikes” on drone sites and invest in counter-drone technology, or terror groups could escalate “high-impact assaults” and worsen regional instability.

The latest attack occurred on January 29 in Borno state, when terrorists launched a two-pronged assault using multiple armed drones and ground fighters on a military base.

The military reported that nine soldiers were killed in the attack, carried out by ISWAP — described by Acled as the “most prolific” IS African affiliate in “drone warfare”.

“The growing use of armed and surveillance drones by violent extremist groups in the Sahel and Lake Chad region is deeply concerning, and it marks a significant shift,” said Audu Bulama Bukarti, a security expert.

“Drones lower the cost of conducting attacks, allow militants to gather intelligence with minimal risk and enable strikes on military targets that were previously harder to reach.”