Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kill five villagers in northern Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Gunmen killed at least five villagers in a raid in northern Nigeria's Borno state on Wednesday before being repelled by government troops, military sources said, an attack that bore the hallmarks of Islamist Boko Haram militants.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and displaced 1.5 million in a six-year-old insurgency to create an Islamic State in Nigeria's northeast. But an army counter-offensive this year ousted Boko Haram from much of the territory it had taken and the jihadists have returned to a pattern of hit-and-run attacks.