Hundreds of Boko Haram militants overnight attacked a military post in southeastern Niger, killing 16 soldiers and wounding nine others, the defense ministry said on Wednesday.
About 50 of the Islamist militants were killed in the ensuing fighting in the Diffa region, the West African country, and large quantities of weapons were recovered, the ministry said in a statement.
The attack belatedly targeted the city of Baroua, where thousands of residents had barely returned after taking refuge elsewhere following the jihadist massacres of 2015.
The Boko Haram insurgency erupted in northeast Nigeria in 2009, but violence frequently spreads to neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon in the Lake Chad Basin.
In December, an attack blamed on Boko Haram killed 28 people and burned down 800 houses in the Diffa region.
More than 6,000 people had returned to Baroua by the end of June as part of a program to encourage around 26,000 residents of the region to leave safer villages or UN camps and return home.
Authorities said they had tightened security to provide returnees with greater protection.
The poorest country in the world according to the UN Human Development Index (HDI), Niger faces jihadist attacks on two borders, with Islamist militants also leading cross-border raids from neighboring Mali.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AFP)
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