DAKAR, Senegal

At least four soldiers were killed and eight others seriously wounded in an attack by the Boko Haram terrorist group in Niger, the country’s Defense Ministry said Monday. 

Members of the terrorist organization detonated an explosive device previously planted in the Diffa region as a military vehicle was passing, the ministry said in a statement.

Boko Haram launched a bloody insurgency in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria but later spread its atrocities to neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a military response.

More than 30,000 people have been killed and nearly 3 million displaced in a decade of Boko Haram’s terrorist activities in Nigeria, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Violence committed by Boko Haram has affected some 26 million people in the Lake Chad region and displaced 2.6 million others, according to the UN Refugee Agency.