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Suspected jihadists have killed six Nigerian fishermen in Far North region, close to the Lake Chad hideouts of insurgents, a local official and a police officer told AFP on Thursday.

"Three armed men from Boko Haram arrived on a motorbike and attacked the fishermen," overnight Wednesday, said an administration official in the Logone and Chari department, asking not to be named.

A gendarme officer deployed in the area confirmed the killings close to the border with Chad and Nigeria.

Nigeria's Boko Haram and its dissident branch, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), have in recent years carried out deadly attacks against security forces and civilians in northern Cameroon, as well as adjacent parts of Nigeria, Niger and Chad.

The Cameroonian authorities call both groups "Boko Haram".

Boko Haram launched an insurgency in northeast Nigeria in 2009 before it spread through the region.

More than 36,000 people have been killed since, mainly in Nigeria, and three million forced to flee their homes, the United Nations says.

A multinational force with troops from all four countries last week said it had killed over 800 jihadists in about two months in the volatile Lake Chad region.

The Multinational Joint Task Force said 805 "terrorists" were killed on Lake Chad's islands and neighbouring areas between 28 March and 4 June.

The vast, swampy Lake Chad basin stretches across the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, and the have established bases in its many small islands.