Niamey
– An attack by Boko Haram jihadists on an army post in the southeastern Niger
region of Diffa left eight dead and three missing, state radio said on Monday.
Local sources had said on Sunday
that a “major” attack had killed soldiers who were hospitalised in
Diffa, but they did not give figures.
Chetima Wangou came under attack
by Boko Haram by around 20 heavily armed vehicles, the radio report said.
“On the friends’ side there
were eight dead, eight wounded, three missing. On the enemy side almost all the
assailants were neutralised,” the radio said.
‘Almost all neutralised’
It said there were three
successive clashes and that vehicles that had managed to cross the border into
Nigeria were “almost all neutralised” by air strikes by a joint
multinational force of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.
The region which abuts Nigeria
and Chad has repeatedly suffered attacks by the Boko Haram jihadist group since
2015, but they have subsided since late last year.
READ | Boko Haram jihadists attack Niger army position after lull in conflict
The new attack was partially
enabled by a lower water level on the Komadougou River marking the border
between Niger and Nigeria, a humanitarian source told AFP.
In February last year, seven
Nigerian soldiers were killed in an attack in the same village of Chetima
Wangou.
READ | Military chiefs sacked after deadly Niger jihadist attack
Located in the Lake Chad basin in
the middle of the Sahel, the Diffa region is home to 120 000 refugees from
Nigeria fleeing the Boko Haram violence, as well as 110 000 people internally
displaced within Niger, according to UN data released in October.