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Niger’s government says Boko Haram militants killed 18 people, including a local religious leader, in an attack on a village in Niger’s southern border area of Diffa on the Nigerian border. Security sources say the gunmen arrived in the village of Gogone near the shores of Lake Chad on foot and fired indiscriminately on residents and attacked their homes.

Niger’s Diffa region has suffered dozens of cross-border strikes this year by Boko Haram, whose stronghold in northeast Nigeria lies just a few kilometers away.