Suspected Boko Haram insurgents have forced hundreds of soldiers to flee Marte, a border town along the shores of the Lake Chad, a local official and witnesses said Friday. 

"The terrorists, numbering over 2,000, appeared from various directions on Thursday and engaged the soldiers in Kirenowa town and adjoining communities in Marte," said Imamu Habeeb, a local community leader.

Relatives and diplomats rushed to an Indonesian prison island on Friday ahead of the looming executions of nine foreign drug convicts who are set to be shot in defiance of international anger. 

Indonesia advised consular officials to go to Nusakambangan, the high-security prison island where its executions are carried out, and where all of the death row convicts are now congregated. 

Nigerian troops were forced to retreat from Boko Haram's Sambisa Forest stronghold in the restive northeast after a landmine blast killed one soldier and three vigilantes, security sources said Thursday.

Military top brass said on Wednesday that soldiers were conducting offensives "in some forest locations" in the area after it was announced last week that operations were imminent.

Two soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram rocket attack on a military vehicle in the northeast Nigerian town of Baga, residents told AFP on Tuesday.

Six other soldiers and a civilian vigilante were critically injured when their vehicle hit a mine planted by the Islamists just outside the town in Borno state on Sunday, they added.

Nigeria's outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday fired the country's police chief, a surprise move less than six weeks before leaving office that raised questions of a political motive.

A State House press release carried the headline "President Jonathan sacks Suleiman Abba," and said the police chief had been relieved of his duties "with immediate effect."

A botched suspected Boko Haram suicide attack targeting a group of Shiite Muslims injured three people in northeast Nigeria on Monday, witnesses told AFP.

The would-be bomber detonated his explosives a few meters (yards) from an open-air mosque in the Dogo Tebo area of Potiskum shortly after afternoon prayers.

At least 23 villagers have died in clashes between two mainly fishing and farming communities in central Nigeria's Benue state, police said Sunday.

"Some 23 corpses have been recovered following the fighting between Ologba and Egba communities in Agatu local government area of the state," state police spokesman Austin Ezeani told AFP.

Nineteen people were killed in Thursday night's attack on a Cameroonian village by Nigeria-based Boko Haram militants, a security source said in an updated toll, adding that most of the victims were beheaded.

"The final toll from this attack is 19 dead, with a majority of the victims decapitated," a security source said Saturday on condition of anonymity.

Islamist fighters from Nigeria's Boko Haram group have killed at least 10 civilians in a cross-border raid on a village in northern Cameroon, security sources told AFP on Friday.

"Boko Haram attacked the village of Bia overnight" Thursday to Friday, one source said, on condition of anonymity. "The toll is 10 civilians killed and a large number of livestock stolen."

​Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday told the United Nations his country would not need the help of an international force in the fight against Boko Haram.

The outgoing leader said in a statement he wanted the U.N. to focus instead on helping to rebuild communities and assist those affected by the six-year Islamist insurgency.