Suspected Boko Haram fighters kill 13 people in Niger

Thirteen people were killed and three others injured in an attack on a village in southeast Niger that was blamed on Boko Haram fighters, local officials said Wednesday.

"Thirteen people were executed and three others suffered gunshot wounds in an attack by Boko Haram Tuesday evening in Ala village," Malam Ligari, a local official in the Diffa region, which has been repeatedly attacked by the armed group, told Agence France-Presse

"This was a fast operation," Ligari said, adding that the assailants came on foot after crossing the Yobe river — which forms a natural border between Niger and Nigeria, where the armed group is based.

"Boko Haram militants came in number. They burned cars, houses, stores," local radio station Anfani reported.

Since February, the Diffa region has suffered several attacks blamed on Boko Haram, including one in June in which 38 people were killed, including 10 children.

Niger's parliament on Tuesday voted to extend for another three months a state of emergency declared in February over such attacks.

"The biggest problem we have is controlling the border with Nigeria," Niger's Interior Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou told deputies.

Nigeria's military on Wednesday said it had rescued 338 people held captive by Boko Haram and raided a number of the armed group's camps on the edge of its stronghold in the country’s northeast.

"The rescued persons which comprised eight males, 138 females and 192 children, have since been evacuated," said military spokesman Sani Usman, adding that 30 suspected Boko Haram fighters were killed in the operation.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and displaced 2.1 million others in the remote northeast of Nigeria.

Cameroon, Chad and Niger have formed a military alliance with Nigeria and Benin to battle the group, which this year declared allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 

Boko Haram’s grip on the region has suffered as a result of the military alliance. But the group maintains strongholds in remote parts of northeast Nigeria, the Mandara mountains on the Nigeria-Cameroon border and the islands of Lake Chad.

Al Jazeera and wire services