ABUJA: Nigeria’s military said on Tuesday it had killed at least 50 rebels fleeing toward Cameroon in a battle in which 15 of its own soldiers and five civilians also died.

Nigerian forces have stepped up an offensive in the volatile northeast in the past few days, after Boko Haram fighters armed with grenade launchers and anti-aircraft guns attacked an army barracks in the town of Bama on Friday.

Defense spokesman Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade said the military had targeted insurgents behind the Bama attack and that 20 vehicles used in that raid had been spotted from the air and destroyed.

“Although a good number of the insurgents escaped with bullet wounds, while some have been arrested, over 50 of them died in the course of exchange of fire with ground troops in the operations to apprehend fleeing terrorists,” he said.

Boko Haram rarely talks to the media but occasionally sends video statements anonymously.

President Goodluck Jonathan last month extended a state of emergency in areas worst affected by the insurgency.

The military began an offensive in May that initially drove Boko Haram extremists from large parts of the northeast, but they fell back into the hilly area of Gwoza, near the Cameroon border, from where they have launched deadly counter-attacks.

Boko Haram is still seen as the main security threat to Nigeria, Africa’s leading energy producer.

The group claimed responsibility for a coordinated strike on Dec. 2 on the air force base and military barracks in the main northeastern city of Maiduguri in the first major assault on the heavily guarded city this year.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s military is in hot pursuit of Boko Haram extremists who abducted soldiers’ wives and children when they attacked a barracks in northeast Nigeria, witnesses said Tuesday.

The bodies of presumed terrorists killed in Friday’s attack on a tank battalion in Bama town are rotting in the desert heat but residents say they are too scared to bury them.

“The corpses are beginning to smell, there are many corpses lying out there in the bush ... but no one dares touch them, lest you are labeled a relation or collaborator,” said resident Babagana Bama.