A close associate of the leader of the jihadist group Boko Haram denied on Friday his death, announced the day before by the Niger army, which had claimed to have killed him in an air strike in the Lake Chad basin.

Boko Haram, one of the region's leading jihadist organizations, launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009 that left some 40,000 dead and more than two million displaced, before spreading to the Lake Chad Basin, bordering Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.

In an audio message transmitted to AFP by a security source in the Lake Chad region, a lieutenant of "Bakura," the leader of Boko Haram, claimed that the news of his death was "completely false."

"I am currently with him, we are together," he added in Hausa, calling the announcement "propaganda."

On Thursday evening, the Nigerien army announced that it had "neutralized the infamous Bakura in a surgical operation of exemplary precision" on August 15 on the island of Shilawa, in the southeast of the country, in the Lake Chad basin.

No evidence has been provided by the Nigerien authorities and AFP has not been able to independently verify the death of this important fighter.

Experts interviewed by AFP on Friday called for caution regarding this announcement.

"I think we have to be very, very careful. We've already announced the deaths of certain jihadist leaders many times, and it's been contradicted many times," said Vincent Foucher, a French researcher at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research, France) and a specialist in Boko Haram.

Mr. Foucher, along with another European expert on jihadist groups in West Africa, who wished to remain anonymous, indicated that according to their sources, Bakura is still alive.

In the mid-2010s, Boko Haram's then-leader, Abubakar Shekau, was repeatedly reported dead before regularly reappearing in videos.

Shekau eventually died in 2021 and Bakura replaced him as leader of Boko Haram.

- "Targeted strikes" -

Niger suffered the first attacks by this jihadist group in 2015 in Bosso, a town located on the shores of Lake Chad.

The August 15 operation took place "very early," the Nigerien army said. "An air force fighter aircraft launched three targeted and successive strikes on the positions Bakura used to occupy in Shilawa," it added.

According to the Nigerien army, Ibrahim Mahamadou was around forty years old and originally from Nigeria.

His name is notably associated with the kidnapping of more than 300 students in Kuriga, Nigeria in March 2024, suicide attacks on markets, mosques, civilian gatherings, and attacks against the armies of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, according to the Nigerien army.

Niger has been ruled for two years by a military regime that came to power in a coup d'état, but which is struggling to stem jihadist violence in the country.

In addition to its eastern region, where Boko Haram is active, Niger is fighting armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in its western part, near the borders of Burkina Faso and Mali.