Boko Haram launches fresh deadly attacks in Nigeria, Chad

Maiduguri: Dozens of people were feared killed when Boko Haram Islamists armed with guns and explosives attacked a village in northeastern Nigeria, officials said on Sunday.

Suicide bombers also carried out deadly attacks on Sunday in the Lake Chad region, an area frequently targeted by Boko Haram fighters, a local security official said. Nigeria's army said the jihadists attacked Dalori, some 12 kilometres from Maiduguri late yesterday, and burnt down the village. Dalori is near camps set up for people displaced by the seven-year Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast.

"During the incident lives were lost while some people sustained injuries," army spokesman Colonel Mustapha Anka said in a statement. Residents claimed at least 50 people were killed in the attack which happened after evening prayers late yesterday. Anka said the jihadists arrived the village in cars and on motorcycles "before they started opening fire and burning houses".

He said three female suicide bombers trying to mix with the villagers were "intercepted and subsequently got blown up". And in the Lake Chad area, three people were killed and dozens wounded in two suicide bombings, a security official said.

In the first attack in Guie, a bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up, killing one person and injuring 32, while the second attack in the village of Miterine left two dead and 24 wounded, the official said. Boko Haram, which seeks a hardline Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has killed some 17,000 people and forced more than 2.6 million others to flee their homes since 2009.