AT LEAST FIVE people were killed and six others injured in a night-time Boko Haram raid and suicide attack on a village in northeastern Nigeria.

A male suicide bomber detonated his explosives among a group of residents sleeping in the open in Tungushe village in Borno state at about 12:15 am.

The blast was followed by indiscriminate gunfire from Boko Haram jihadists lurking in the dark, said Mustapha Muhammad, a civilian militia leader in the area.

“Five people have been killed and six others injured in the attack,” Muhammad said by telephone from the village, which lies six kilometres (nearly four miles) north of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

Tungushe resident Umara Kyari, who gave a similar casualty toll, said the attackers torched eight thatched houses and three vehicles before stealing about 100 cows.

“Fortunately all the cows returned to the village,” said Kyari. “I think the attackers are not used to herding cows and could not control them.”

Boko Haram regularly uses suicide bombers, mostly women and young girls, to target mosques, schools, bus stations and military locations.

Its nine-year armed violence to establish a hardline Islamic state in remote northeastern Nigeria has killed more than 20,000 people.

Suicide attacks have increased in Borno state recently, prompting the military commander fighting the jihadists to offer a five-million-naira (€11,913) reward for information on bomb-making factories in the region.

On 16 June, six young girls killed 43 people in suicide attacks in the town of Damboa, 80 kilometres southwest Maiduguri.

On Wednesday, 15 people were injured when two female suicide bombers targeted a market on the edge of a military base in the city.

Nigeria’s army said troops on patrol in the Mafa area, east of Maiduguri, had come across “pockets of fleeing Boko Haram terrorists” yesterday.

“The gallant troops… overpowered the terrorists, killing even of them and recovered weapons,” it said on Twitter.

The insurgents are believed to have carried out an attack in Zabarmari village, also in the Mafa area, on Thursday, according to a civilian militia source.