NIGER

This isn't the first time the militant group has employed the tactic.

Boko Haram launched a new assault on Maiduguri, the town it hopes to make the capital of its Nigerian caliphate.

The assault is the second the group has launched against the strategically important city of Maiduguri in the past week.

Chadian fighter jets dropped bombs Saturday on the Nigerian town of Gamboru, which is occupied by Boko Haram insurgents.

The bloc has backed a plan that calls for the creation of a regional five-nation force of 7,500 troops to fight the militant group.

The march had been banned in the wake of separate protests over Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ten people are now believed to have been killed during protests in Niger, where anger erupted over cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo.

"There are tensions abroad where people don't understand our attachment to the freedom of speech," French President Hollande says.

The Nigerian Islamist group had, last week, allegedly killed over 2,000 people, including women and children, in the town of Baga.

The extremist group is extending its territory and terror in Nigeria.

About 7,300 Nigerians fled to Chad this week in the wake of attacks by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram that reportedly killed 2,000.

Residents of Baga who fled to neighboring Chad said that the militant group killed many and set the town on fire.

Lazarevic was kidnapped from his hotel, along with another French citizen, three years ago, and has appeared in many videos by the group.

A mosque bombing is the latest atrocity in a terror campaign that has killed hundreds in Nigeria in recent weeks.

The U.S. strike in Somalia with drones and airplanes is part of a bigger picture, as American forces battle Islamic extremism in Africa.

At least 70 people were killed overnight when Boko Haram seized control of the key northeastern town of Bama in Borno State.

Three people were killed by Boko Haram in the border towns of Ashigashya and Kerawa, as almost 500 Nigerian soldiers fled to Cameroon.

Now the largest economy in Africa, Nigeria's lasting progress is only discouraged by Boko Haram's pervasive violence.

“Someone saw the plane fall and alerted us, so we sent a mission there that went to the spot," said a Burkina Faso official.

Air Algerie Flight 5017 was flying over a disputed region of Mali, where al Qaeda-linked jihadists and government forces have been fighting.

An Algerian official has confirmed that Air Algerie Flight AH5017, which went missing between Burkina Faso and Algiers, has crashed.