Boko Haram affected areas

NigeriaХs government is in talks with Islamist militant group Boko Haram about a possible ceasefire with the ultimate aim of securing a permanent cessation of hostilities, the countryХs information minister said on Sunday.

Nigeria's presidency said on Monday it plans to negotiate for the release of 110 girls abducted from a school in the northeastern town of Dapchi last month, rather than use a military operation to free them by force. Й Nigeria is grappling with an insurgency by Boko Haram that has killed at least 20,000 people since 2009. Members of the group are suspected of the latest kidnapping, on Feb. 19, in the state of Yobe.

Suspected Boko Haram militants killed at least 11 people including three aid workers in an attack on a military barracks in NigeriaХs northeastern Borno state late on Thursday, according to two security reports seen by Reuters.

On February 2, more than two dozen Boko Haram fighters emerged from a hideout in Sambisa Forest and surrendered to authorities. Their defections were a key victory for Nigerian forces and regional allies in their battle against the diminished, but still deadly, terrorist group.

With more than a quarter of a million people affected by the Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin region, the United Nations refugee agency and its humanitarian partners launched on Wednesday an inter-agency funding appeal for $157 million. ТThe Boko Haram crisis lingers on and is far from over,У said Kelly T. Clements, Deputy United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at the appeal launch in NigerХs capital Niamey.

In a statement (army spokesman, Col. Timothy) Antigha said the abductees included men, women and children, and he said most were forced to work as farm laborers by the insurgents on various islands in Lake Chad. He said the military was monitoring the escaped captives to ensure there are no militants hiding among them.

Secretary-General Ant—nio Guterres has condemned the killing today of a Mauritanian peacekeeper and the wounding of three others of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) by anti-Balaka militia in Bria in the countryХ s east.

NigeriaХs government has a plan for the northeast, torn apart by eight years of conflict with Boko Haram: displaced people will be housed in fortified garrison towns, ringed by farms, with the rest of the countryside effectively left to fend for itself.

In recent months, Boko Haram has attacked rural military bases and convoys in the northeastern part of Nigeria and in surrounding countries, acquiring weapons in the process. Since spring 2015, when regional militaries chased most of its members back underground, the sect had been focused on survival and terrorism. While the group is far from their high point of 2014-2015, when they controlled a territory estimated at 20,000 square miles, these raids show a new strategic acumen.

Chad has withdrawn hundreds of troops from neighbouring Niger, where they were helping local forces fight Boko Haram Islamist militants, humanitarian sources and officials said. Й There was no immediate explanation or comment from defence officials in Chad. But the move came a month after the vast central African country complained about an unexpected U.S. travel ban imposed on its nationals.