Dozens of Boko Haram militants were killed in a series of airstrikes carried out by the military in Nigeria's northeast region, a military spokesman said on Saturday.

Some hideouts of the terror group were also destroyed in the airstrikes on Friday at the village of Ngwuri Gana, along the Gulumba Gana-Kumshe axis and Tumbuma Baba of the northern state of Borno which shares a border with Lake Chad.

John Enenche, the spokesman for the Nigerian military, told Xinhua that airstrikes were carried out as a series of aerial surveillance missions had indicated that the two locations were being used as staging areas where the terrorist leaders and their fighters meet to plan and launch attacks.

According to Enenche, the military's fighter jets and helicopter gunships were deployed for the operation, resulted in the destruction of some of the terrorists' structures, as well as the neutralization of dozens of the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants.

He, however, did not give the exact figure of the militants killed.

Boko Haram has been trying to establish an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria since 2009, extending its attacks to countries in the Lake Chad Basin. 

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