Boko Haram release first beheading video since pledging allegiance to ISIS

Nigerian militant group, Boko Haram, has releasing its first video of a beheading since it pledged allegiance to ISIS earlier this year, British media reported on Saturday.

The footage shares many similarities with the videos that have been released by ISIS over the past year.

The ten minute long video shows what appears to be an intense exchange of gun fire between Boko Haram militants and Nigerian soldiers.

It also shows the militants showing off the security badges of the dead Nigerian troops to the camera, while standing next to their corpses.

It then ends with the brutal murder of a captured African Union soldier, who kneels in front of three masked Boko Haram fighters, two of whom point AK47s at his head. The video then cuts to reveal his decapitated body lying on the floor, with the head placed on the back of the body.

ISIS accepted the 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 militant group has been fighting a six-year insurgency to impose 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 is now feared to be spilling over into neighboring Cameroon and Chad.

As a result, five African nations have agreed to form a coalition to fight the group and 8,700 troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin are expected to begin operations before the end of next month.