Boko
Haram jihadists killed 16 civilians in an attack this week on a
southeast Niger village, near the Nigerian border, a local official said
Saturday. “On July 15, Boko Haram elements fired on locals who were
praying in a village near the town of Bosso,” said Bako Mamadou, mayor
of Bosso, a town in southeast Niger on the border with Nigeria, where
the armed Islamist group originated.
“They killed 15 people on the spot and another person succumbed later
to their wounds,” Mamadou said on state television. According to the
Bosso mayor, four others were injured in the attack. Meanwhile the Niger
army said Saturday it had killed 32 Boko Haram fighters from July 15-17
during “sweeping up” operations following the July 15 attack by “Boko
Haram elements”.
The defence ministry added that three Islamist fighters were taken
into custody, adding that Chadian soldiers also took part in the
operation. Nigeria and Niger, along with Chad and Cameroon, have
launched a joint offensive to end Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency,
which has claimed at least 15,000 lives and caused about 1.5 million
people to flee their homes.
There has been a recent spate of Boko Haram attacks in Niger’s
southeast Diffa region following weeks of relative calm. The upsurge in
attacks on civilians comes after the four-nation coalition pushed the
militants out of territory they had seized in northeast Nigeria.
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