ABUJA, Nigeria

Nigerian troops killed 16 members of the Boko Haram terror group in the northeast, a top defense official said Friday.  

Defense Ministry spokesman John Enenche said terrorists were killed while others fled with wounds sustained during an air operation in Kassa Kura in Maiduguri Town.

Enenche said troops arrested 11 terrorists and a cache of ammunition belonging to the terror group was seized.

Boko Haram launched a bloody insurgency in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria but later spread its atrocities to neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a military response.

More than 30,000 people have been killed and nearly 3 million displaced in a decade of Boko Haram's violence in Nigeria, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Violence by Boko Haram has affected 26 million people in the Lake Chad region and displaced 2.6 million others, according to the UN Refugee Agency. 

*Writing by Seda Sevencan