Boko Haram attack kills 18 in southeast Niger

Eighteen people were killed and 100 homes torched in an attack in the dead of night by Boko Haram fighters on a village in southeastern Niger, authorities told AFP yesterday. “The toll is 18 dead, 11 hurt, almost 100 homes burned down” in the village of Wogom late Wednesday, the mayor of the nearby town […]

Eighteen people were killed and 100 homes torched in an attack in the dead of night by Boko Haram fighters on a village in southeastern Niger, authorities told AFP yesterday.
“The toll is 18 dead, 11 hurt, almost 100 homes burned down” in the village of Wogom late Wednesday, the mayor of the nearby town of Bosso, Bako Mamadou, told AFP.
A humanitarian worker said the insurgents came from Nigeria and crossed the Komadougou Yobe river, the border between Niger and Nigeria.
Armed jihadists and suicide bombers from Boko Haram have staged repeated attacks since February in Niger’s Diffa region near Nigeria, leaving hundreds dead.
The United Nations has registered around 50 attacks and clashes between insurgents and Niger troops since February. The last came in late October when they shot dead 13 people in a village near Diffa.
Some 150 schools with more than 12,000 pupils have been forced to close due to the attacks in the southeast.
This week Africa’s prime fashion event, the FIMA festival in the capital Niamey, was called off over fears of terror attacks.