ABUJA, Nigeria — A resurgence of Boko Haram attacks is shaking Nigeria’s northeast, as Islamic extremists have repeatedly overrun military outposts, mined roads with bombs, and raided civilian communities since the start of the year, raising fears of a possible return to peak Boko Haram-era insecurity despite the military’s claims of successes.

Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. The conflict, now Africa’s longest struggle with militancy , has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors, resulted in the death of around 35,000 civilians and the displacement of more than 2 million others, according to the United Nations.

In the latest attack late last week in the village of Gajibo in Borno state, the epicenter of the crisis, the extremists killed nine members of a local militia that supports the Nigerian military, after soldiers deserted the base when becoming aware of the insurgents’ advance, according to the group’s claim and local aid workers. That is in addition to roadside bombs and deadly attacks on villages in recent months.

Two factions

Boko Haram has since broken into two factions .

Advertisement

One of the them is backed by the Islamic State group and is known as the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP. It has become notorious for targeting military positions and has overrun the military on at least 15 occasions this year, killing soldiers and stealing weapons, according to an Associated Press count, experts and security reports reviewed for this story.

On the other hand, the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad , or JAS, faction has increasingly resorted to attacking civilians and perceived collaborators, and thrives on robberies and abductions for ransom.

In May, ISWAP struck outposts in Gajibo, Buni Gari, Marte, Izge, Rann, and launched a twin assault on the Nigeria-Cameroon joint base in Wulgo and Soueram in Cameroon. Other attacks this year have hit Malam Fatori, Goniri, Sabon Gari, Wajiroko and Monguno, among others. The group often attacks at night.

Expansion and decentralization

Malik Samuel, senior researcher at non-profit Good Governance Africa, said that ISWAP’s success is as a result of its territorial expansion following gains against rival JAS as well as a decentralized structure that has enhanced its ability to conduct “coordinated, near-simultaneous attacks across different regions,” Samuel said.

Advertisement

“The unpredictability of attacks under this framework illustrates ISWAP’s growing strategic sophistication,” Samuel said.

External support from IS in Iraq and Syria is also a critical resource to the militants, said Samuel, who has interviewed ex-fighters. Such support is evident in ISWAP’s evolving tactics, including nighttime raids, rapid assaults with light but effective weaponry, and the use of modified commercial drones to drop explosives, Samuel said.

Outgunned and outnumbered military

Ali Abani, a local nonprofit worker familiar with the military operations in Borno’s strategic town of Dikwa, said that the army bases are understaffed and located in remote areas, making them vulnerable to attacks.

“When these gunmen come, they just overpower the soldiers,” Abani said.

Reinforcements, either in the form of air support or nearby ground troops, are often too slow to arrive, allowing the militants enough time to strip the outposts of weapons needed to bolster their arsenal, he added, recalling a May 12 attack during which soldiers fled as they were outnumbered, leaving the extremists to cart away weaponry.

Advertisement

There also have been reports of former militants who continued to work as informants and logistics handlers after claiming to have repented.

Nigeria losing ground ‘almost on a daily basis’

At its peak in 2013 and 2014, Boko Haram gained global notoriety after kidnapping 276 Chibok schoolgirls and controlled an area the size of Belgium .

While it has lost much of that territory on the back of military campaigns, the new surge in Boko Haram attacks has raised fears about a possible return to such a gloomy past.

Borno Gov. Babagana Zulum warned recently of lost gains after raising concerns that military formations in the state are being dislodged “almost on a daily basis without confrontation.”

Federal lawmakers continue to highlight the extremists’ growing sophistication and advanced weaponry, calling on the government to bolster the capabilities of the military.

PARIS — They were just playfighting. That was French President Emmanuel Macron ‘s explanation Monday for video images that showed his wife, Brigitte , pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from their plane to start a tour of Southeast Asia this weekend.

The moment quickly made headlines in France, with media trying to decipher the interaction that cameras spotted through the just-opened door of the plane. The headline of a story on the website of the daily Le Parisien newspaper asked: “Slap or ‘squabble’? The images of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron disembarking in Vietnam trigger a lot of comment.”

Macron later told reporters that the couple — married since 2007 after meeting at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher — were simply joking around.

Advertisement

“We are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,” he said, adding that the incident was being overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”

In video taken by The Associated Press as the Macrons arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, a uniformed man can be seen pulling open the plane door and revealing the president standing inside, dressed in a suit and talking to someone who wasn’t visible.

Brigitte Macron’s arms — in red — were seen reaching out and pushing Macron away, with one hand covering his mouth and part of his nose while the other was on his jaw. The French leader recoiled, turning his head away. Then, apparently realizing that he was on camera, he broke into a smile and gave a little wave.

In subsequent images, Macron and his wife, wearing a red jacket, appeared at the top of the stairs. He offered an arm but she didn’t take it. They walked down the carpeted stairs side by side.

Advertisement

The French leader argued that the images and reaction to them offered a cautionary tale about disinformation in the social media age, noting that in recent weeks, other videos had been used to circulate made-up stories about him.

“Everyone needs to calm down,” he said.

His office also downplayed the interaction.

“It was a moment where the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around. It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists,” his office said.

Brigitte Macron was Brigitte Auzière, a married mother of three children, when they met at his high school. A teacher, she supervised the drama club where Emmanuel Macron, a literature lover, was a member.

TEL AVIV, Israel — A U.S.-backed group that is slated by Israel to take over aid distribution in Gaza says it plans to launch its work imminently, despite opposition from the U.N. and most humanitarian groups and the unexpected resignation of its executive director. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the linchpin of a new aid system that would wrest distribution away from aid groups led by the U.N., which have carried out a massive operation moving food, medicine, fuel, tents and other supplies across Gaza since the war began in October 2023.

The new mechanism limits food distribution to a small number of hubs under guard of armed contractors, where people must go to pick it up. Currently four hubs are being set up, all close to Israeli military positions. Three are in the far south where few Palestinians are located.

Advertisement

GHF said in a statement that distribution will start as soon as Monday. “We will not be deterred. Our trucks are loaded and ready to go,” it said.

The group said it planned to reach more than 1 million Palestinians by the end of the week. Gaza has a population of around 2.3 million.

Jake Wood, the American heading the effort, said Sunday night he was resigning because it was clear the organization would not be allowed to operate independently.

Israel has demanded an alternative plan because it accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid. The United Nations and aid groups deny there is significant diversion. They reject the new mechanism, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon, violates humanitarian principles and won’t be effective.

Israel blocked food, fuel, medicine and all other supplies from entering Gaza for nearly three months, pushing the territory toward famine . Last week, it allowed in a trickle of supplies, saying it would let the U.N. distribute it only until GHF was running.

Advertisement

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry on Monday warned Palestinians in Gaza against dealing with GHF.

How will this plan work, who’s behind it and why are aid groups pushing back?

Who’s behind GHF?

GHF publicly launched early this year and is run by a group of American security contractors, ex-military officers and humanitarian aid officials. It has the support of Israel and the United States.

Until resigning, Jake Wood was the face of the foundation. Wood is a U.S. military veteran and co-founder of a disaster relief group called Team Rubicon.

It’s unclear who will now run GHF.

A proposal circulated by the group earlier this month and obtained by the AP included several names, including the former director of the U.N. World Food Program, David Beasley. Neither Beasley nor GHF have confirmed his involvement.

Advertisement

It’s also unclear who is funding GHF. It claims to have more than $100 million in commitments from a European Union government but has not named the donor. The U.S. and Israel have said they are not funding it.

What’s their plan?

The GHF’s plan to centralize distribution through hubs is similar to ones designed by Israel.

It says each of its initial four hubs would serve meals for roughly 300,000 people. It has said it will eventually be able to meet the needs of 2 million people. It said it will create more hubs within 30 days, including in the north, but did not specify their exact locations.

Aid will be delivered with the help of private subcontractors transporting supplies in armored vehicles from the Gaza border to the hubs, where they will also provide security. It said the aim is to deter criminal gangs or militants from redirecting aid.

Advertisement

Satellite photos from May 10 obtained by The Associated Press show what appear to be construction of the hubs. The photos show one in central Gaza, close to the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land held by Israeli troops. Three others are in the area of Rafah, south of the Morag Corridor, another military-held strip.

Almost the entire population is currently in northern Gaza — where no hub is currently located — or in central Gaza. They would have to cross through Israeli military lines to reach the hubs near Rafah.

Just before his resignation, Wood spoke of some adjustments, but it is not clear if Israel agreed to them.

In a letter to Israeli officials obtained by the AP, Wood said that until at least eight hubs are operating, the existing U.N.-led system will continue providing food in parallel to GHF. He also said the U.N.-led system would continue in the future to distribute all non-food humanitarian aid — everything from medical supplies to hygiene items and shelter materials. GHF was not capable of handling those supplies, Wood acknowledged.

Advertisement

In the letter, sent to Israel’s military body in charge of aid coordination in Gaza, COGAT, Wood said GHF and Israel had agreed on those terms. There was no confirmation from COGAT, however.

Why aren’t aid groups on board?

The U.N. and aid groups say that the plan would “weaponize aid” for Israel’s military and political purposes.

They say Israel would have power to determine who receives aid and to force the population to move to where it is being distributed, emptying large parts of the territory. That would potentially violate international laws against forced displacement.

“We cannot take part in a system that violates humanitarian principles and risks implicating us in serious breaches of international law,” said Shaina Low, communication adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading aid group operating in Gaza.

Advertisement

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that under the aid mechanism, Gaza’s population would eventually be moved to a “sterile zone” in Gaza’s far south. He said it was for their protection while Israeli forces fight Hamas elsewhere. He also said once the Palestinians enter the area, “they don’t necessarily go back.”

Israel also says that after Hamas is defeated, it will implement a plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump to relocate the territory’s population outside Gaza, though it portrays migration as “voluntary.” The Palestinians, along with nearly all of the international community, have rejected the idea.

GHF said in a statement it is independent and apolitical and will not be part of any mass displacement. It said its system is fully consistent with humanitarian principles including impartiality and independence.

Advertisement

Israel had previously told aid groups it intends to vet aid recipients and use facial recognition technology. GHF has said food will be given according to need, without eligibility requirements. However, aid groups say recipients will have to pass close to or through Israeli military positions to reach the hubs, exposing them to vetting.

The U.N and aid groups also say the GHF plan cannot possibly meet the needs of Gaza’s large and desperate population .

Plans for distributing non-food aid remain uncertain. Also, GHF has said each meal it distributes would have 1,750 calories. That is below the 2,100-calorie per day standard for meals in emergency situations used by the U.N.’s World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Food Program.

Aid workers say the change is simply not necessary.

The U.N. and other aid groups “have shown absolutely that they can meet the needs of that population, when allowed to,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said. “We need to just keep reverting back to what works.”

———

PARIS — Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary “The Sorrow and the Pity” shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during World War II — has died at 97. The German-born filmmaker, who was the son of legendary filmmaker Max Ophuls, died Saturday at his home in southwest France of natural causes, his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert told The Hollywood Reporter.

Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for “Hôtel Terminus” (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was “The Sorrow and the Pity” that marked a turning point — not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past.

Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it “destroyed the myths the French still need.” It would not air nationally until 1981. Simone Veil, Holocaust survivor and moral conscience of postwar France, refused to support it.

Advertisement

But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation — an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity.

The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France’s liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The French Republic, he insisted, had never ceased to exist.

“The Sorrow and the Pity,” which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: Filmed in stark black and white and stretching over four and a half hours, the documentary turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance — even the town’s former Nazi commander — Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation.

Advertisement

There was no narrator, no music, no guiding hand to shape the audience’s emotions. Just people — speaking plainly, awkwardly, sometimes defensively. They remembered, justified and hesitated. And in those silences and contradictions, the film delivered its most devastating message: that France’s wartime story was not one of widespread resistance, but of ordinary compromise — driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity.

The film revealed how French police had aided in the deportation of Jews. How neighbors stayed silent. How teachers claimed not to recall missing colleagues. How many had simply gotten by. Resistance, “The Sorrow and the Pity” seemed to say, was the exception — not the rule.

It was, in effect, the cinematic undoing of de Gaulle’s patriotic myth — that France had resisted as one, and that collaboration was the betrayal of a few. Ophuls showed instead a nation morally divided and unready to confront its own reflection.

Advertisement

Even beyond France, “The Sorrow and the Pity” became legendary. For cinephiles, its most famous cameo may be in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall”: Alvy Singer (Allen) drags his reluctant girlfriend to a screening, and, in the film’s bittersweet coda, she takes her new boyfriend to see it too — a nod to the documentary’s singular place in film history.

In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, Ophuls bristled at the charge that he had made the film to accuse. “It doesn’t attempt to prosecute the French,” he said. “Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?”

Born in Frankfurt on Nov. 1, 1927, Marcel Ophuls was the son of legendary German-Jewish filmmaker Max Ophuls, director of “La Ronde,” “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, and “Lola Montès.” When Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled Germany for France. In 1940, as Nazi troops approached Paris, they fled again — across the Pyrenees into Spain, and on to the United States.

Advertisement

Marcel became an American citizen and later served as a U.S. Army GI in occupied Japan. But it was his father’s towering legacy that shaped his early path.

“I was born under the shadow of a genius,” Ophuls said in 2004. “I don’t have an inferiority complex — I am inferior.”

He returned to France in the 1950s hoping to direct fiction, like his father. But after several poorly received features — including “Banana Peel” (1963), an Ernst Lubitsch-style caper starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau — his path shifted. “I didn’t choose to make documentaries,” he told The Guardian. “There was no vocation. Each one was an assignment.”

That reluctant pivot changed cinema. After “The Sorrow and the Pity,” Ophuls followed with “The Memory of Justice” (1976), a sweeping meditation on war crimes that examined Nuremberg but also drew uncomfortable parallels to atrocities in Algeria and Vietnam. In “Hôtel Terminus” (1988), he spent five years tracking the life of Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon,” exposing not just his Nazi crimes but the role Western governments played in protecting him after the war. The film won him his Academy Award for Best Documentary but, overwhelmed by its darkness, French media reported that he attempted suicide during production.

Advertisement

In “The Troubles We’ve Seen” (1994), he turned his camera on journalists covering the war in Bosnia, and on the media’s uneasy relationship with suffering and spectacle.

Despite living in France for most of his life, he often felt like an outsider. “Most of them still think of me as a German Jew,” he said in 2004, “an obsessive German Jew who wants to bash France.”

He was a man of contradictions: a Jewish exile married to a German woman who had once belonged to the Hitler Youth; a French citizen never fully embraced; a filmmaker who adored Hollywood, but changed European cinema by telling truths others wouldn’t.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A new aid system in Gaza opened its first distribution hubs Monday, according to a U.S.-backed group that said it began delivering food to Palestinians who face growing hunger after Israel’s nearly three-month blockade to pressure Hamas. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is taking over the handling of aid despite objections from United Nations. The desperately needed supplies started flowing on a day that saw Israeli strikes kill at least 52 people in Gaza .

The group said truckloads of food — it did not say how many — had been delivered to its hubs, and distribution to Palestinians had begun.

“More trucks with aid will be delivered tomorrow, with the flow of aid increasing each day,” it said in a statement.

The U.N. and aid groups have pushed back against the new system, which is backed by Israel and the United States. They assert that Israel is trying to use food as a weapon and say a new system won’t be effective.

Advertisement

Israel has pushed for an alternative aid delivery plan because it says it must stop Hamas from seizing aid. The U.N. has denied that the militant group has diverted large amounts.

The foundation began operations a day after the resignation of its executive director. Jake Wood, an American, said it had become clear the foundation would not be allowed to operate independently. It’s not clear who is funding the group.

The organization is made up of former humanitarian, government and military officials. It has said its distribution points will be guarded by private security firms and that the aid would reach a million Palestinians — around half of Gaza’s population — by the end of the week.

Under pressure from allies, Israel began allowing a trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza last week after blocking all food, medicine, fuel or other goods from entering since early March. Aid groups have warned of famine and say the aid that has come in is nowhere near enough to meeting mounting needs.

Advertisement

Hamas warned Palestinians on Monday not to cooperate with the new aid system, saying it is aimed at furthering those objectives.

Airstrikes hit shelter

The Israeli airstrikes killed at least 36 people in a school-turned-shelter that was hit as people slept, setting their belongings ablaze, according to local health officials. The military said it targeted militants operating from the school.

Israel renewed its offensive in March after ending a ceasefire with Hamas. It has vowed to seize control of Gaza and keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed or disarmed, and until it returns the remaining 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, from the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in the 2023 attack. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed around 54,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It says more than half the dead are women and children but does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

Advertisement

Israel says it plans to facilitate what it describes as the voluntary migration of over 2 million people in Gaza, a plan rejected by Palestinians and much of the international community .

Israel’s military campaign has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and internally displaced some 90% of its population. Many have fled multiple times .

Rescuers recover charred remains

The strike on the school in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City also wounded dozens of people, said Fahmy Awad, head of the ministry’s emergency service. He said a father and his five children were among the dead. The Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza City confirmed the overall toll.

Awad said the school was hit three times while people slept, setting fire to their belongings. Footage circulating online showed rescuers struggling to extinguish fires and recovering charred remains.

Advertisement

The military said it targeted a militant command and control center inside the school that Hamas and Islamic Jihad used to gather intelligence for attacks. Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in residential areas.

A separate strike on a home in Jabalya in northern Gaza killed 16 members of the same family, including five women and two children, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies.

Palestinian militants meanwhile fired three projectiles from Gaza, two of which fell short within the territory and a third that was intercepted, according to the Israeli military.

Ultranationalists march in east Jerusalem, break into UN compound

Ultranationalist Israelis gathered Monday in Jerusalem for an annual procession marking Israel’s 1967 conquest of the city’s eastern sector. Some protesters chanted “Death to Arabs” and harassed Palestinian residents.

Advertisement

Police kept a close watch as demonstrators jumped, danced and sang. The event threatened to inflame tensions that are rife in the restive city amid nearly 600 days of war in Gaza.

Hours earlier, a small group of protesters, including an Israeli member of parliament, stormed a compound in east Jerusalem belonging to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has banned . The compound has been mostly empty since January, when staff were asked to stay away for security reasons. The U.N. says the compound is protected under international law.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

___