KALA-BALGE. Residents of three villages in northern Nigeria have repelled an attack by suspected Boko Haram Islamist fighters, an eyewitness has told journalists.

About 200 of the militants were killed during the fighting in the Kala-Balge district of Borno state, he said.

The witness said the residents had formed a vigilante group.

The area which came under attack is not far from the site of a market massacre last week in which more than 300 people were killed.

The suspected Boko Haram militants overran the town of Gamboru Ngala 11 days ago on its busy market day in a killing and looting raid which lasted about five hours.

A security official said that the vigilantes in Kala-Balge, which is near Lake Chad, were ready for a fight after learning of an impending Boko Haram attack on Tuesday. 

The eyewitness said the area was littered with bodies after the fighting.

He had seen 50 bodies in one village and 150 in another village, all of which he thought were the corpses of militants.

Residents also seized three cars and a military vehicle from the attackers, he said.

On Tuesday, Nigeria’s government said it was ready to negotiate with Boko Haram after it abducted more than 200 girls during a raid on a boarding school in Borno state a month ago.

Their kidnapping has caused international outrage, and foreign teams of experts are in the country to assist the security forces in tracking them down.

On Wednesday, UK Prime Minster David Cameron offered to send a spy plane to Nigeria to help in the hunt.

It is exactly a year since President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno and its neighbouring states of Adamawa and Yobe in an effort to curb the insurgency.

But according to data collected by the University of Sussex in the UK, the figure of civilian casualties blamed on militant attacks has more than tripled since then.

Agencies