{Thirty Nigerien troops and two Nigerian soldiers have been killed in clashes with Boko Haram militants in Niger, the country’s defence ministry says.}<\/p>\n
It says “hundreds of assailants” attacked a military post in the south-eastern town of Bosso, on the Nigerian border, on Friday night.<\/p>\n
A counter-attack on Saturday morning allowed government troops to retake all positions in Bosso, the ministry says.<\/p>\n
It says there were several dead and injured “on the enemy’s side”.<\/p>\n
Boko Haram has not commented on the Nigerien defence ministry’s statement.
\nThe Islamist group is based in Nigeria but is being tackled by a multinational force, including soldiers from Niger.<\/p>\n
Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou has been praised in the West for rallying neighbouring countries to fight Boko Haram.<\/p>\n
In March, six soldiers from Niger’s army were killed in a Boko Haram ambush in the south-east.<\/p>\n
{{Founded in 2002, initially focused on opposing Western-style education – Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” in the Hausa language<\/p>\n
Launched military operations in 2009<\/p>\n
Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria, hundreds abducted, including at least 200 schoolgirls<\/p>\n
Joined so-called Islamic State, now calls itself IS’s “West African province”
\nSeized large area in north-east, where it declared caliphate<\/p>\n
Regional force has retaken most territory last year<\/p>\n
‘How I almost became a suicide bomber’}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Thirty Nigerien troops and two Nigerian soldiers have been killed in clashes with Boko Haram militants in Niger, the country’s defence ministry says.} It says “hundreds of assailants” attacked a military post in the south-eastern town of Bosso, on the Nigerian border, on Friday night. A counter-attack on Saturday morning allowed government troops to retake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25841"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25841"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}