Call it the biggest Boko Haram surrender to the Nigerian Army and you may not be wrong as some 200 members of the Boko Haram Islamist militant group have given themselves up to the Nigerian Army.

The fighters are said to have handed themselves over in the town of Banki on the border with Cameroon.

The military earlier said that the town had been recaptured from Boko Haram but there is no independent confirmation.

Some 17,000 people are said to have been killed in the six-year insurgency, mainly in northern Nigeria.