Suspected Boko Haram fighters have
killed at least nine people and
abducted as many as 40 others in
south-east Niger , according to local
officials.
The gunmen late on Sunday attacked a
village in Kablewa town near the
southeastern Niger city of Diffa, close
to the border with Nigeria , authorities
said on Monday.
They killed eight young people and an
elderly man, Kablewa Mayor Abari Elh
Daouda told the DPA news agency by
telephone.
In a separate interview with the AFP
news agency, Daouda said between 30
to 40 people, including women and
young men, were also abducted.
He said Niger authorities were headed
to the area to investigate.
Abba Gata Issa, another mayor from
the Diffa area, confirmed to Reuters
that nine people had died, and around
40 women and children had been
kidnapped.
The attackers rode camels into the
village and carried out the killings,
according to Maman Nour, the director
of a community radio station in
Kablewa.
The attack was the second such
incident in the village in a week.
There are more than 300,000 refugees
and displaced people sheltered in the
Diffa area, but authorities said they
were planning to transfer thousands of
refugees and displaced people to
camps further from the border with
Nigeria, where Boko Haram operates.
Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris, reporting
from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, said
no group has claimed responsibility
for the latest attack.
"For incidents like this, it takes Boko
Haram days to come up with a
statement," he said. "But over the last
two months in particular, we've seen
heightened activities on the part of the
Boko Haram, who have stepped up
their suicide bombings, especially on
the Nigerian side.
"This is an escalation at a time when
security services are saying that they
have gotten a grip of the situation,"
our correspondent said.
Since 2015, the armed group's
members have been staging regular
attacks in the Diffa region, where
Niger has declared a state of
emergency.
On Wednesday, two female bombers
blew themselves up in a refugee camp
in the town, killing two other people
and wounding 11, in an attack also
blamed on Boko Haram.
More than 20,000 people have been
killed and more than two million have
fled their homes since Boko Haram
launched an armed campaign in 2009
to create an Islamic state in northeast
Nigeria.


Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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