NIAMEY, Niger – An attack blamed on an Islamist militant group on Saturday killed 28 people and burned 800 houses in the Diffa region of Niger, according to Nigerien and UN officials.
Members of the group, Boko Haram, have been carrying out attacks in the Lake Chad region since 2009, causing some 250,000 people to flee, according to UN figures.
The latest attack targeted the village of Toumour last weekend, less than 20 kilometers from the border with Nigeria. the government said in a statement.
Describing the 28 dead, a government spokesman Abdourahamane Zakaria said, “10 were the result of gunfire, 14 from fire and four from drowning.” He said 100 people had been injured.
Neither the government nor a UN statement on the attack named the perpetrators, but Diffa’s governor Issa Lemine said on Sunday that Boko Haram was responsible.
Agence France-Presse reported that the group had claimed responsibility for the attack in a video sent to the news agency.
The Boko Haram uprising broke out in northeastern Nigeria, but violence regularly engulfs Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
The bloodshed in Toumour is one of the worst the country has suffered at the hands of the militants, Mr. Lemine Sunday.
He described panic scenes after the attack, which affected an area with 60,000 internally displaced persons and refugees.
“It’s an indescribable tragedy,” said Mr. Lemine.