Niamey, NIGER
Suspected Islamist
militants killed 25 soldiers and wounded six others in an attack on an army
post in west Niger near its border with Mali on Thursday, the government said
in a statement.
A Nigerien security agent participates in a simulated raid on a militant camp during the U.S. sponsored Flintlock exercises in Ouallam, Niger April 18, 2018. |
It was not
immediately clear who was responsible for the attack on the post at
Chinagodrar, about 130 miles (209 km) north of the capital Niamey, in which 63
assailants were also killed.
But the attack
coincides with a campaign by Islamist groups connected to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group to
force the Nigerien army back from its western frontier with Mali where
government control of the rural centre and north has all but evaporated because
of the rise of jihadists.
Despite efforts by
international forces to stop them, attacks have risen fourfold this year in Niger, killing nearly 400 people, according to data from the
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a non-profit research
organization.
This included a
raid last month that killed 71 soldiers at another military outpost about 150
km to the west of Chinagodrar, the biggest on the Niger military in living
memory.
Security has
deteriorated this year across the Sahel, a semi-arid strip of land beneath the
Sahara, amid jihadist attacks and deadly ethnic reprisals between rival farming
and herding communities.
The region has
been in crisis since 2012 when ethnic Tuareg rebels and loosely-aligned
jihadists seized the northern two-thirds of Mali, forcing France to intervene
the following year to beat them back. The jihadists have since regrouped and
expanded their range of influence.
No comments:
Post a Comment