Suspected Boko Haram insurgents shot dead “many” people, possibly as many as 97, late on Wednesday in Kukawa, a town near Lake Chad in Borno State, in northeast Nigeria, the latest in a string of attacks in the state.

Multiple sources, according to the news agency Reuters, confirmed the attacks and the extent of killings.

A former local council official in the town said many had been killed after the militants attacked in the early evening.

A member of a local defence group said the death toll could be as high as 97.

“Many people were killed,” said the military source, adding that the casualty figure “may be very high”.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and left about 1.5 million others displaced during a six-year insurgency to create an Islamic caliphate in the northeast of Africa’s most populous nation and top oil producer.

The last month has seen a resurgence in attacks, most of them in the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, the biggest city of northeastern Nigeria where the army’s new command centre for the campaign against Boko Haram is now located.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who was inaugurated on May 29, has held talks with officials from neighbouring countries Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin to set up a regional force to tackle the insurgents.