A female suicide bomber travelling on a tricycle blew herself up Friday at a market in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, witnesses said, as Nigeria and its neighbors finalize a force to combat Boko Haram jihadists.

"There had been a suicide attack on Gamboru market this morning. It was a female suicide bomber. The attack happened around 6:30 am (0530 GMT) as the grocers were arriving in the market which starts early," said Babakura Kolo, a vigilante helping the Nigerian army combat Boko Haram jihadists in the region.

Authorities in Niger's Diffa area, on the border with Nigeria, have banned the full Islamic veil following suicide attacks in countries in the region by women wearing the religious garment, an official said Wednesday.

"Women in the region are forbidden from wearing the full veil until further notice, in order to prevent suicide attacks by Boko Haram," Diffa mayor Hankouraou Biri-Kassoum told AFP.

An Egyptian police officer guarding Niger's embassy in Cairo was shot dead on Tuesday night outside the diplomatic mission by gunmen who then fled the scene, a police official said.

A second officer was wounded by the two armed men, who were on a motorcycle, according to the official. Niger's embassy is situated in southwest Cairo.

Boko Haram jihadists killed 16 civilians in an attack this week 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.

Chadian police on Sunday warned that anyone found wearing the Muslim full-face veil would be arrested, after a Boko Haram suicide bombing in the capital left 15 dead.

Saturday's attack in a bustling N'Djamena market by a man disguised as a woman in a full-face veil also injured 80 and spread panic across the city.

A soldier and three Boko Haram members died early Sunday when the Islamists raided a prison in southeastern Niger in a likely bid to free detained colleagues, humanitarian and government sources said.

The attack on the prison at Diffa, near the border with Nigeria, occurred between 0000 and 0100 GMT, a humanitarian source said.

Boko Haram militants slit the throats of five civilians in southeast Niger during a targeted attack by the Islamist group wreaking havoc in the region, according to local authorities. 

"Five employees of a Nigerien company had their throats slit yesterday (Thursday) evening in Dagaya, a village near Bosso," Mayor of Bosso Bako Mamadou told AFP. 

Mourdja's nose has been eaten away, like one lip and part of her upper gum, leaving the 13-year-old girl atrociously disfigured by noma, a disease that thrives on malnutrition.

"It was better before," the teenager says shyly and simply in the arid heartland of Niger, one of the world's poorest nations, clearly ill at ease and fiddling with her bracelets.

Suspected Boko Haram militants killed five people and injured four others in an attack in southeast Niger Tuesday night, state radio announced Thursday.

Three of the victims in the attack on a village near the town of Bosso, on the border with Nigeria, were shot dead while the two others were burned to death, the radio reported, blaming Nigeria-based Boko Haram jihadists.

An attack by Boko Haram militants in southeast Niger, which occurred overnight Wednesday, killed 38 civilians, most of them women and children, the country's interior minister said.

"Members of the Boko Haram terrorist group have attacked the villages of Lamana and Ngoumao... The initial death toll is 38 civilians, among them 14 men, 14 women and 10 children," minister Hassoumi Massaoudou told public radio.