Boko Haram suicide attack kills at least four in Niger

Suspected Islamist militants from Nigeria’s Boko Haram group killed three civilians and a soldier in a double suicide attack across the border in Niger on Sunday, security sources said.

Four attackers also died in Niger’s southeastern region of Diffa and authorities were searching for two more suspects, a security official said.

Niger, Cameroon and Chad have all suffered a spillover of violence from Boko Haram’s northern Nigerian strongholds.

Niger has arrested at least 1,100 suspected Boko Haram militants this year and has placed its Diffa region under a state of emergency.

Diffa, which borders Nigeria, has suffered at least 57 attacks since February, statistics published by the United Nations on Friday showed.

At least 150,000 refugees seeking protection from Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria live in Niger’s Diffa region.

An 8,700-strong multinational force comprising troops from Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon and Chad will begin operations against the militants at the end of this month when the rainy season is expected to stop, Chad’s President Idriss Deby said recently.

The force is due to receive U.S. support, including training, worth $45 million.

This comes after a double bomb attack in Nigerian claimed the lives of at least 15 people leaving 41 injured in a Nigeria’s capital Abuja on Saturday.

A bomb went off near a police station in the satellite town of Kuje, not far from the capital’s airport, and the other in the suburb of Nyanya – the first attacks on the city in more than a year.

The blast in Nyanya went off in a crowded area not far from the site of two blasts in April and May last year that killed at least 90 people. Before then, there had not been an attack on the capital in two years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Attacks by the Boko Haram Islamist group have lately been concentrated in Nigeria’s northeastern‎ Borno state, the birthplace of the insurgency, and the northern parts of neighbouring Adamawa state.

Boko Haram has been trying to carve out an Islamist state in the country’s northeast since 2009, killing thousands and displacing 2.1 million people.

Since losing most of the territory it took over earlier this year, it has reverted to hitting soft targets such as markets, bus stations and places of worship as well as hit-and-run attacks on villages, mainly in northeastern Borno state.