18 killed in Boko Haram attack on Nigerian army base, villages

Boko Haram has killed at least 18 people and wounded scores in coordinated attacks overnight on a military camp and villages around the flashpoint Nigerian city of Maiduguri with suicide bombers, mortars and guns, Nigerian officials say.

“Eighteen Boko Haram terrorists on foot attacked the military base while seven suicide bombers targeted residents of nearby Bale Shuwar and Alikaranti villages at 8:50 pm (1950 GMT),” a senior military officer in Maiduguri, a city in north-eastern, Nigeria says. “The terrorists fired mortars at troops.

“So far we have recovered 18 dead bodies from the two villages,” Bello Dambatto, an official from the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) tells AFP. “The victims were killed while trying to escape the fight between the insurgents and the military,” said Dambatto.

— with AFP