Local authorities said on Friday that five Boko Haram insurgents were killed and two Niger soldiers were hurt in fighting in southeast Niger near the border with Nigeria.
According to the sources, on Thursday there were clashes between the military and jihadist rebels in the towns of Bague and Tchoungoua in the Diffa region.
Five Boko Haram members were killed on the opposing side, according to Smain Younous, who was named governor of Diffa last month. “On our side, we have two with slight injuries,” he added.
Four AK-47 weapons were taken from the attackers by the Niger Forces.
Younous claimed that “the defense and security forces control every nook” of the Diffa area.
After several weeks of peace in the Diffa region, which has also seen heavy flooding from the Yobe River this year, violence broke out on Thursday.
The river flows into Lake Chad, a huge region full of islets and wetlands that act as havens for terrorist organizations, and forms a natural boundary with Nigeria where it rises before pouring into the lake.
In addition to the threat posed by Boko Haram, Sahelian jihadist organizations, such as Islamic State in the Greater Sahara in the west, frequently attack Niger.
The U.N. estimates that 300,000 Nigerians have fled or internally displaced from the Diffa region as a result of atrocities committed by Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province.
The U.N. Human Development Index places Niger as the world’s poorest nation, and the insurgency, which started in northern Mali in 2012, has severely impacted Niger.
