The militia were escorting a civilian convoy from Borno state’s Gamboru town to the regional capital Maiduguri when around 12:30 GMT their vehicle drove over a landmine suspected to have been planted by jihadis at Damno village

Eleven militia fighters working alongside the Nigerian military to fight jihadis were killed on Saturday in the country’s northeastern region when the vehicle they were in hit a landmine on a highway near the border with Cameroon, two militia sources said.

The militia were escorting a civilian convoy from Borno state’s Gamboru town to the regional capital Maiduguri when around 12:30 GMT their vehicle drove over a landmine suspected to have been planted by jihadis at Damno village, the sources told the AFP news agency.

“The rear tires of the vehicle carrying 13 of our comrades hit a wide pothole in which a landmine was buried, and it exploded. Eleven people in the vehicle were killed while two escaped with injuries,” said Shehu Mada, an anti-jihadi militia leader in Gamboru.

Usman Hamza, another militia leader who gave the same toll, said the victims were removed from the remains of the vehicle and returned to Gamboru for burial.

The militant conflict in Nigeria has gradually eased in intensity as the military carries out offensives against the militants.

But Jihadis are increasingly resorting to planting mines on highways to target military and civilian convoys after they were pushed back from the territory they once controlled during the early years of the West African country’s more than 15-year Islamist insurgency.

The Gamboru-Maiduguri highway, a strategic 140-km (87-mile) trade route in the region which provides an important link with neighbouring Cameroon, was reopened in July 2016 after it was shut by the military for two years as a result of incessant jihadi attacks.

Boko Haram and rival Islamic State West Africa Province still launch sporadic ambushes on convoys from their hideouts and plant landmines along the highway.

Early this year, 17 people lost their lives along the highway in two separate mine blasts that were blamed on jihadis. Ten more people were killed by a landmine in April.

The grinding conflict in Nigeria has since 2009 led to the loss of 40,000 lives and also displaced around 2 million others from their homes in the northeast. The violence in the region has spilled over into neighbouring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

The recent military coups in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso and the subsequent withdrawal of French and American troops from the Sahel to Nigeria’s north have heightened concerns over regional instability and violence extending farther into the coastal West African countries.