NIAMEY
\nMilitant-hit Niger last week killed about 30 members of the Boko Haram group and detained 960 followers, most of them women and children, who had fled neighboring Nigeria, official sources said.
\nState TV channel Tele Sahel said late Tuesday that on March 7 aerial surveillance spotted a \u201cmassive movement of people\u201d along the Kamadougou Yoge River, which marks the border between the two countries, who were heading toward Lke Chad.
\nThe report said they were members of the Boko Haram militant group, who were fleeing their hideout in Sambisa forest in northeast Nigeria after coming under pressure from their rivals, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
\nISWAP split from Boko Haram in 2016 and rose to become the dominant group in the region\u2019s long-running militant turmoil.
\nIt seized swathes of territory under Boko Haram control after leader Abubakar Shekau was killed in clashes with ISWAP in May 2021.
\nSeeking to prevent the group from reaching Lake Chad and using its marshlands as a haven, the army tried to negotiate a surrender, using envoys and dropping leaflets, but eventually launched a dawn assault on March 11, Tele Sahel said.
\n\u201cAround 30 terrorists were neutralized\u201d and 960 other people, most of whom were women and children, were detained, taken to the town of Diffa and handed over to the Nigerian military authorities, it said.
\nAn elected official in Toumour, a village near the town of Bosso bordering Lake Chad, confirmed Wednesday that \u201ca large number of Boko Haram\u201d fleeing Sambisa had been intercepted on Niger\u2019s border \u201cand handed over to the Nigerian authorities.\u201d
\nAnother official said that many others, however, \u201care heading toward (the islands) on the lake, especially women and children, in terrible conditions.\u201d
\nOne of the poorest countries in the world, Niger is being assailed by two militant insurgencies.
\nOne, in the southwest, came from neighboring Mali in 2015, while the other, in the southeast, is a long-running spillover from Boko Haram\u2019s campaign in Nigeria.
\nThe group\u2019s violence has killed over 40,000 people and displaced around two million from their homes since 2009, according to the United Nations.
\nThe vast Lake Chad region, shared by Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, is a notorious bolthole for both Boko Haram and ISWAP, who set up camps on islands in its marshlands.
\nThe four countries set up a Multinational Joint Task Force in 2015, comprising 8,500, with the aim of defeating the armed groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NIAMEY Militant-hit Niger last week killed about 30 members of the Boko Haram group and detained 960 followers, most of them women and children, who had fled neighboring Nigeria, official sources said. State TV channel Tele Sahel said late Tuesday that on March 7 aerial surveillance spotted a \u201cmassive movement of people\u201d along the Kamadougou […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-319760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n