Strikes are latest by the Nigerian military as it battles resurgence of attacks by armed groups in country’s northeast.

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) says it has killed at least 35 armed fighters in air strikes near the country’s border with Cameroon, following intelligence that an attack on ground troops was being planned.

The strikes were launched on Saturday on four targets in the Kumshe area in Borno State, near the Nigeria-Cameroon border, said NAF spokesperson Ehimen Ejodame.

“Following the operation, communication was re-established with ground troops, who confirmed that the situation around their location had been stabilised,” he said.

The strikes are the latest by the Nigerian military as it battles a resurgence of attacks in the country’s embattled northeast.

The region faces frequent attacks from Boko Haram and its rival splinter group, ISIL (ISIS) West Africa Province (ISWAP).

Both ISWAP and Boko Haram have recently ramped up their assaults on the military in northeastern Nigeria, which, in addition to Cameroon, also borders Chad and Niger. Armed fighters have overrun military bases, killing soldiers and seizing weapons.

While Nigeria’s 16-year-old armed conflict has slowed since violence peaked around 2015, attacks have picked up since the beginning of the year.

According to the United Nations, the conflict has killed more than 35,000 civilians and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes.

Last week, the US State Department approved the sale of $346m in weapons, including bombs, rockets and munitions, to Nigeria, subject to approval by Congress.

The weapons would “improve Nigeria’s capability to meet current and future threats through operations against terrorist organizations”, the department said.

Huda Abu Naja lies weak and emaciated on a thin mattress in her family’s tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.

The 12-year-old Palestinian girl’s arms are painfully thin, and the bones on her torso are protruding from under her skin, a telltale sign of her acute malnutrition.

“My daughter has been suffering from acute malnutrition since March when Israel closed Gaza’s borders,” Huda’s mother, Somia Abu Naja, tells Al Jazeera, stroking her daughter’s face.

“She spent three months in hospitals, but her condition did not improve,” said Somia, explaining that she decided to bring Huda back to the family’s tent after witnessing five children die of starvation at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.

“She used to weigh 35 kilos [77lbs], but now she’s down to 20 [44lbs],” Somia added.

Huda is just one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza, according to local health authorities, as Israel continues to block food and other humanitarian aid from entering the bombarded enclave.

On Friday, a United Nations-backed hunger monitor confirmed for the first time that more than half a million people were experiencing famine in northern Gaza – the first such designation ever recorded in the Middle East.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system warned that the figure could reach 614,000 as famine is expected to spread to the Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates by the end of September.

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 280 people, including more than 110 children, have died due to Israel-induced starvation since the country’s war on Gaza began nearly two years ago.

Children are being hit hard by the crisis, the IPC said on Friday, with an estimated 132,000 children under the age of five projected to be at risk of death from acute malnutrition by June 2026.

Dr Ahmad al-Farra, the chief paediatric physician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said 120 children are seeking treatment for malnutrition at the facility, while tens of thousands more are suffering in displacement camps with little assistance.

He told Al Jazeera that children in Gaza will suffer the consequences of malnutrition for the rest of their lives, as hospitals in the enclave are lacking the resources and supplies to respond to the crisis.

Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, also told Al Jazeera that an estimated 320,000 children across Gaza were in a state of severe malnutrition.

He said all wounded patients in hospitals were suffering from malnutrition, as well, amid Israel’s continued blockade of the enclave.

Israel has rejected the IPC’s findings, with its foreign ministry saying – despite mounds of evidence – that there was “no famine in Gaza”.

While Israel has allowed limited supplies into the territory in recent weeks amid global outrage over the starvation crisis, the UN and humanitarian groups say what is being allowed in remains woefully insufficient.

An Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme known as GHF has also been condemned as ineffective and deadly, with Israeli forces and US contractors killing more than 2,000 Palestinians as they sought food at the sites since late May.

The IPC famine classification has triggered a renewed wave of calls for Israel to urgently allow a massive and sustained influx of aid into Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher also said starvation was occurring “within a few hundred metres of food” as aid trucks were stuck at border crossings due to Israeli restrictions. He demanded that Israel allow food and medicine in “at the massive scale required”.

Less than 24 hours after his release, US authorities have informed Kilmar Ábrego García that he may be deported to Uganda, following his refusal to accept a plea deal in a pending criminal trial, his lawyers say.

Attorneys for Mr Ábrego García say he declined an offer to plead guilty to human smuggling charges in exchange for deportation to Costa Rica – a deal proposed after it became clear he would be released from custody on Friday.

Mr Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March by the Trump administration and then brought back to the US on criminal charges.

Officials allege Mr Ábrego García has ties with MS-13 criminal gang, a charge he has denied.

The deal to be sent to Costa Rica was offered on Thursday after it became clear Mr Ábrego García would likely be freed from a Tennessee jail on Friday.

The Costa Rican government agreed to accept him as a refugee and provide him legal status there, a letter from a Costa Rican official included in the legal filing says.

His attorneys now say that upon Mr Ábrego García release from federal custody, they were informed of the government’s intention to deport him to Uganda – a country with which he has no known ties.

“There can be only one interpretation of these events,” they wrote in the filing. “The DOJ, DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.”

Mr Ábrego García, now in Maryland with his family, is scheduled to appear in a Baltimore court on Monday. If a judge approves the government’s request, he could face deportation within days.

The US has reached bilateral deportation agreements with Honduras and Uganda as part of its crackdown on illegal immigration, according to documents obtained by the BBC’s US partner CBS.

“This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted,” Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, permanent secretary to the Ugandan foreign ministry, said in a statement.

“Uganda also prefers that individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda.”

Mr Ábrego García’s deportation case has become a fixture of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

He was deported to his native El Salvador in March, and initially kept in the notorious Cecot prison. But after US government officials acknowledged he was deported due to an “administrative error”, a judge ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return.

He was returned to the United States in early June and sent to the state of Tennessee, where he was charged in a human smuggling scheme. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In late June, a federal judge in Tennessee had ruled that Mr Ábrego García was eligible for release, but remained in jail over fears from his own legal team that he could be swiftly deported again if he left the facility.