Jane Onyanga-Omara

USA TODAY

Members of the radical Islamist group Boko Haram burned children alive as part of an assault in Nigeria that killed 86 people, a survivor of the attack alleged.

The incident happened Saturday night in the village of Dalori in northeastern Nigeria. Two nearby camps housing 25,000 people who have fled Boko Haram were also attacked.

The Associated Press said it spoke to a survivor who said he watched Boko Haram extremists firebomb huts and heard the screams of children burning to death. Survivor Alamin Bakura told the AP that several of his family members were killed or wounded in the the attack, which lasted for nearly four hours.

A soldier at the scene told the AP that three female suicide bombers blew themselves up as part of the assault, but there was little information about the sequence of events that led to the deaths of the children. USA TODAY was unable to verify the account.

Mohammed Kanar, the area coordinator of Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency, said 86 bodies, many of them charred and riddled with bullets, were collected by Sunday afternoon.

Abba Musa of the country's State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri, the largest city in the area, said 62 survivors were being treated for burns.

Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper reported that the assault came after claims by the government that Boko Haram militants no longer had the ability to carry out such major attacks other than through suicide bombings. Nigeria previously had said that its military drove the extremists out of towns and villages in the region last year.

32 dead in Nigeria blast blamed on Boko Haram

Soldiers who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media said government troops arrived at Dalori but could not overpower the better-armed militants. They said the extremists only retreated after more troops arrived with heavier weapons.

Nigerians relish new freedoms after reign of terror by Boko Haram militants

Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — and killed about 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million Nigerians from their homes over a six-year period.