Boko Haram fighters waged twin attacks Sunday in Niger, their latest front in an expanding regional insurgency, claiming at least one life, reportedly that of a child.

Boko Haram launched its first major attack in Niger on Friday, triggering a forceful response from regional troops who claimed to have killed more than a hundred of the Islamists.

The clashes in Bosso and Diffa, along the border with Nigeria, marked yet another expansion of violence attributed to Boko Haram, but it seemed to have come at a heavy cost.

Boko Haram militants on Friday launched an attack on a border town in Niger that left a number of people dead, the first such assault in the country by the Islamists now being hunted by regional forces.

Soldiers repelled the assault on the town of Bosso, but it marked yet another expansion of violence attributed to Boko Haram, which has waged a worsening six-year insurgency centered in northeastern Nigeria. 

Niger is set to send troops to Nigeria for the multi-national battle against Boko Haram after scores of people were killed in a fresh onslaught by the Islamist fighters in a key border town.

Intervention from Niger would open a new northern front in the increasingly regional fight against the Islamist insurgents who killed more than a hundred people, including 19 soldiers, on Wednesday in a rampage in the Cameroonian town of Fotokol on Nigeria's border.

Niger is set to send troops to Nigeria for the multi-national battle against Boko Haram after scores of people were killed in a fresh onslaught by the Islamist fighters in a key border town.

Intervention from Niger would open a new northern front in the increasingly regional fight against the Islamist insurgents who killed over a hundred people, including 19 soldiers, on Wednesday in a rampage in the Cameroonian town of Fotokol on Nigeria's border.

Gunmen riding in a speedboat kidnapped four Nigerian oil workers in the crude-producing Niger Delta, the military said Wednesday, as fears rise of growing unrest in the region 10 days before national polls. 

The hostages are employees of the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NOAC), a subsidiary of the Italian major ENI, said area military spokesman Isa Ado. 

Thousands of Nigerian civilians who fled the armed Islamists of Boko Haram have become a headache for Chadian authorities after seeking safety on a multitude of scattered islands in Lake Chad.

"We waded through the water for several days and suffered so much," recalled former taxi driver Adamou Bouba, who snatched up his toddlers, aged two and three, when Boko Haram fighters raided his village, Kiguili, and killed his wife.

Algeria and Niger are set to "pool" their resources to tackle the rising threat posed by jihadist groups in the Sahel region, Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou said on Monday. 

"We have agreed to mobilize and pool our operational capabilities and intelligence to deal with terrorist threats and criminal organizations," Issoufou said in Algiers after a meeting with Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika. 

Forty-five churches were torched over the weekend in Niger's capital during deadly protests over the publication of a Prophet Mohammed cartoon by the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, police said on Monday.

The protests, which left five people dead and 128 people injured in Niamey, also saw a Christian school and orphanage set alight, Adily Toro, a spokesman for the national police, told a press conference.

Police in Niger on Sunday fired tear gas and arrested dozens at a banned opposition protest, a day after deadly riots over a depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in French weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Around 300 demonstrators gathered in the center of the capital Niamey for a long-planned march on parliament, defying a ban on demonstrations announced on Saturday.