Boko Haram jihadists killed 16 civilians in a recent attack on a southeast Niger village, near the Nigerian border, a local official said Saturday.

"On July 15, Boko Haram elements fired on locals who were praying in a village near the town of Bosso," said Bako Mamadou, mayor of Bosso, a town in southeast Niger on the border with Nigeria, where the armed Islamist group originated.

"They killed 15 people on the spot and another person succumbed later to their wounds," Mamadou said in state television.