Thirty-eight
Boko Haram Islamist fighters have been killed during military search operations
carried out by Niger and Chad troops in the Diffa region of southeast Niger
this week, an official said Friday.
Two soldiers were lightly wounded in the
action and “on the enemy side; 38 terrorists killed,” Niger defence ministry
spokesman Moustapha Ledru said on state television.
Substantial
quantities of weapons and munitions were also seized, Colonel Ledru added. The
joint army operations took place between Monday and Wednesday around the
villages of Gueskerou and Toumour in southeastern Niger, he added.
According to
villagers and NGO workers in Gueskerou, 30 kilometres from Diffa, Boko Haram
elements attacked the town on Wednesday night, without killing anyone.
“The
attack nonetheless caused a psychosis in the population” and “the assailants
torched houses and stole food and medicines after pillaging shops and a pharmacy,”
an NGO official told AFP.
Boko Haram’s seven-year insurgency has left at least
20,000 people dead inNigeria and border areas of neighbouring Niger, Chad and
Cameroon, and made more than 2.6 million homeless.
Attacks in Niger’s Diffa
region began in February 2015. In late July this year a multinational force,
drawn from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, was formed to tackle the Islamic
insurgents and clear them out of towns and villages.
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