Boko Haram has set a terrifying new precedent by releasing its first gruesome video of a beheading since it pledged allegiance to ISIS.
The video adopts many of the same style-points as the hundreds of barbaric videos released by ISIS over the last year.
The ‘west Africa’ insignia in the top-left corner suggests the terror group has set up a new so-called media wing in the country.
It comes on the same day that MailOnline learned of a Somali terror group’s intentions to join ISIS – which would extend its so-called caliphate to east-Africa.
The ten minute-long propaganda video begins with what appears to be an intense firefight against Nigerian soldiers.
Boko Haram fighters exchange machine gun fire with the troops and launch heavy mortar grenades on their locations.
It shows them standing proudly next to the corpses of scorched Nigerian troops – and showing off their security badges to the camera.
The video ends with the senseless murder of a captured African Union soldier. With a look of true horror on his face, the man kneels in front of three masked Boko Haram fanatics – two of whom point AK47s at his head.
The video then cuts to reveal his decapitated body lying motionless on the floor.
Islamic State accepted a pledge of allegiance from Boko Haram, who were responsible for the deaths of over 10,000 in Nigeria in 2014, in March this year.
The audio message entitled ‘kill and be killed’ – released through the militants’ vast social media channels – was read by an ISIS spokesperson who also threatened further violence against the Christians
Speaking for his leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the man in the recording says: ‘We announce to you to the good news of the expansion of the caliphate to West Africa.
‘Our caliph has accepted the pledge of loyalty of our brothers of Boko Haram so we congratulate Muslims and our jihadi brothers in West Africa.’
The militants have been waging a six-year insurgency to impose strict Shariah law in Nigeria and earlier this year it launched attacks across the border on Cameroon – before striking Niger and Chad.
The group has killed thousands in bomb attacks and violent sieges on villages in the remote north-east, and are now feared to be spilling over into neighbouring Cameroon and Chad.
It inspired five African nations agreed to form a coalition to take the group on and 8,700 troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin are expected to begin operations before the end of next month.
Only today, MailOnline learned that Somali terror group Al-Shabaab could soon scrap its allegiance to Al-Qaeda and pledge loyalty to rivals ISIS instead.
Islamic State invited the east-African jihadi group to join forces with them through a propaganda video released in March – urging it to wage jihad on neighbouring Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania
