Boko Haram Islamists claimed five lives in an attack on a mosque in northeast Nigeria over the weekend, before being repulsed by soldiers who killed 15 of the insurgents, the military said in a statement Sunday.

The latest attack by the extremist group, which has been waging an insurgency since 2009, struck on Saturday morning at Damboa town in Borno state, the group's stronghold.

Eighteen people died when a boat carrying some 70 passengers capsized on the Niger River in central Nigeria, an official said Sunday, a week after 42 perished in a similar incident.

"We lost 18 lives. We were told there were about 70 people on the boat," Mohammed Shaba, head of the State Emergency Management Agency, told Agence France Presse.

Nigeria's military has launched air strikes on a Boko Haram camp, killing several Islamists, near a northeastern college campus where insurgents massacred 40 students at the weekend, a spokesman said Thursday.

"We tracked the Boko Haram terrorists to their camp in the forest outside Gujba," military spokesman in Yobe state Lazarus Eli said of the Tuesday operation.

A Nigerian charter plane with 20 people on board suffered engine failure shortly after takeoff from Lagos on Thursday, crash-landing near an airport fuel depot and killing at least 13 people, officials said.

The aircraft made by the Brazilian firm Embraer and operated by Nigeria's Associated Airlines took off at 9:30 am (0830 GMT) from Lagos's Murtala Mohammed International Airport, the aviation ministry said in a statement.

Nigeria's president on Tuesday said he had formed a panel tasked with laying the ground for a national dialogue to tackle contentious issues such as religious tensions and the sharing of oil wealth.

"When there are issues that constantly stoke tension and bring about friction, it makes perfect sense for the interested parties to come together to discuss," Goodluck Jonathan said in an address marking the 53rd anniversary of Nigeria's independence.

Boko Haram gunmen on Sunday opened fire in a college dormitory in northeast Nigeria as the students slept, killing at least 40 people, in the latest massacre blamed on the Islamist insurgents.

All of the dead were said to have been students of the College of Agriculture in the town of Gujba, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state.

A boat overloaded with passengers and goods travelling on the Niger River in central Nigeria has capsized, killing 42 people with 100 others missing, the state rescue agency told Agence France Presse Saturday.

The boat with an estimated 150 people on board "split" in two after setting off from Malilli village in Niger state, said Mohammed Shaba, head of the State Emergency Management Agency.

Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru on Friday released a video of a French national kidnapped in December, the SITE jihadi tracking website said.

In the video posted online, 63-year-old Francis Collomp, who was kidnapped in northern Nigeria on December 19, reads a statement with an unidentified person holding a weapon in the background.

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists on Thursday opened fire in a church in Nigeria's restive northeast, killing the pastor and his two children before setting fire to the building and fleeing, the military said.

Boko Haram, which has said it is fighting to create an Islamic state in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria, has repeatedly attacked churches in its four-year insurgency.

Nigeria's army said Thursday it was trying to verify the authenticity of a video that appeared to show Boko Haram's leader mocking reports that he may have been killed.

A security task force last month said wanted Islamist insurgent commander Abubakar Shekau "may have died" from a gunshot wound after a clash with soldiers on June 30.