"The attack was carried out Tuesday afternoon by heavily armed men, who arrived in large numbers and targeted the Petelkole police station on the border with Burkina Faso," a local official told AFP.

"The provisional toll of this attack is seven police officers dead and sixteen wounded," another municipal official, who visited the scene of the attack, said.

"There are deaths, wounded and material damage," a security source said, without specifying the number of killed or the circumstances of the assault.

The attackers, believed to be fighters of the Islamic State (IS) group raging in the region, seized three vehicles and torched several others, according to the city official.

The Niger government has not yet commented on the attack.

The attack took place in the Tera district of the Tillaberi region, a vast area on the borders of Burkina Faso and Mali, which is regularly targeted by jihadist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group.

On March 16, at least 21 people, including two policemen, were killed in an attack by suspected jihadists on a bus and truck near the same police station, according to an official report.

In October 2021, three Nigerien police officers were killed and several others injured, and in May 2017, two police officers and a civilian were killed in an attack on the same post.

The huge and unstable region of Tillaberi, around 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 square miles) in size, is located in the so-called "three borders" area between Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali and has been the scene of several bloody attacks by jihadist movements since 2017.

Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, in a new approach, has initiated dialogue with jihadist leaders in an attempt to keep the peace.

But the military response continues, with some 12,000 soldiers fighting in a dozen anti-jihadist operations, nearly half of them along the more than 1,400 kilometres of borders with Mali and Burkina Faso.