Boko Haram insurgency

Boko Haram militants have kidnapped 37 women and slit the throats of nine other people at a village in south-east Niger, according to the regional governor.
The attack happened on Sunday at the village of Ngalewa, near the border with Nigeria, the governor of Diffa region, Laouali Mahamane Dan Dano, told state TV.

Nigeria said on May 6 that it had negotiated the release of 82 of the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamists more than three years ago, securing their freedom in a prisoner swap deal.

The United Nations warned Nov. 15 that 75,000 Nigerian children risk dying in "a few months" as hunger grips the country's ravaged northeast in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Boko Haram jihadists have laid waste to the impoverished region since taking up arms against the government in 2009, displacing millions and disrupting farming and trade.  

The number of child bombers used by the Islamic extremists of Boko Haram has increased from four to 44 in a year with devastating consequences in communities that now see children as threats, UNICEF said April 12.

Seventy-five percent of the children used are girls, a new report said, emphasizing that these children, many believed captives, are "victims, not perpetrators."

A suicide bomber killed at least 10 people and wounded at least one in an attack carried out on a mosque in northern Cameroon on Wednesday.

Militants claiming loyalty to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) said they were behind suicide bombings near the Nigerian capital Abuja which killed at least 15 people, a statement on Twitter said on Oct.4.

Three bomb blasts on Sept.20 rocked the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the stronghold of Boko Haram Islamists, the army said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

"There were three improvised explosive devices explosions at Gomari and Ajilari general area in Maiduguri at about 7:21 pm (1821 GMT)," military spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement.    

Some 500,000 children have been forced to flee Boko Haram militants in the last five months after an upsurge in attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, the UN children's agency said on Sept.18.

A child bomber killed up to six people on Aug. 25 outside a bus station in the heartland of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in northeastern Nigeria.

Witnesses reported seeing a "young girl" trying to get into the station in the Yobe state capital Damaturu around 7:00 am and refusing to be searched by security guards at the gate before blowing herself up.

Boko Haram militants kidnapped 135 people and killed at least eight others in a raid in northern Cameroon, as the Islamists continued to strike beyond their strongholds in neighbouring Nigeria, police and local sources said on August 5.