Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped 15 girls overnight in a village near Toumour, southeastern Niger Republic, the local mayor said on Saturday.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, (NAN), Boukar Mani Orthe, the mayor of the town in Niger’s Diffa region near the border with Nigeria, said about 50 armed men seized the girls in a village about nine kilometres from the town centre.
On Thursday suspected Boko Haram fighters killed eight people working at French drilling company, Foraco’s water well site in Toumour.
Boko Haram has been waging an insurrection since 2009 aimed at establishing an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. It has launched repeated attacks into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
The violence has killed thousands of civilians and forced millions to flee their homes in the large Lake Chad basin region.
Kidnapping of schoolgirls has been a Boko Haram horror mark, since its fighters in 2014 kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, in Nigeria.
It also staged this year, another major kidnap of schoolgirls in Dapchi, Yobe state.
