DHAKA: Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped 40 boys and young men in a remote village in northeast Nigerian Borno state on New Year's Eve.

Residents who fled the isolated settlement said on Saturday, reports The Straits Times.

Scores of Boko Haram militants stormed the Malari village and whisked away the males, aged between 10 and 23, into the nearby Sambisa forest, believed to be one of the Islamists' major bases.

The news of the abductions came out only days later, when residents who fled the village arrived in the state capital Maiduguri late on Friday.

‘They came in pick-up trucks armed with guns and gathered all the men in the village outside the home of the village chief where they preached to us before singling out 40 of our boys and taking them away,’ Bulama Muhammad told the media Malari village lies 20km from the Sambisa forest and close to the town of Gwoza, which the militants captured last June declaring it part of their caliphate.

BDST: 1919 HRS, JAN 03, 2015