No group claimed duty. (Representational)
Niamey, Niger:
Fifty-eight folks have been killed in “barbarous” assaults on a bus and close by villages in Niger near the nation’s border with Mali, the federal government mentioned on Tuesday.
On Monday afternoon, “teams of armed, nonetheless unidentified people intercepted 4 autos carrying passengers again from the weekly market of Banibangou to the villages of Chinedogar and Darey-Daye,” the federal government mentioned in an announcement learn out on public tv.
“The toll from these barbarous acts (is) 58 useless, one injured, quite a lot of grain silos and two autos burned and two extra autos seized,” it added.
No group claimed duty, however Niger is combating two jihadist campaigns — within the west close to Mali and Burkina Faso, and a decade-old insurgency within the southeast on the border with Nigeria.
The raids occurred within the Tillaberi area situated within the “tri-border space” — a flashpoint zone the place the frontiers of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali converge.
Earlier, an area resident had advised AFP that the raids started with an assault on a bus travelling to Chinedogar, through which “round 20 folks had been killed.”
One other resident mentioned these killed had been purchasing at Banibangou, a serious market city just some kilometres (miles) from the Malian border.
“Armed bandits” then attacked villages at round 6 pm, killing about 30 folks, a safety supply mentioned.
The federal government introduced three days of nationwide mourning from Wednesday.
It referred to as for “better vigilance” from the inhabitants and reaffirmed its “willpower to relentlessly pursue the struggle in opposition to criminality in all its types”.
– Sahel violence –
Niger is a part of a France-backed alliance of nations within the Sahel area battling militants, together with some in a bunch aligned with the Islamic State referred to as ISWAP — an offshoot of Boko Haram.
Lots of of lives have been misplaced, almost half 1,000,000 folks have fled their properties, and devastating injury has been inflicted.
On January 2, 100 folks had been killed in assaults on two villages within the Mangaize district of Tillaberi.
The bloodbath, one of many worst in Niger’s historical past, occurred between two rounds of the nation’s presidential election.
In December 2019, 71 Nigerien troops died in an assault at Inates, and the next month 89 had been killed in an assault on their base at Chinedogar.
Together with central Mali, the lawless tri-border space sees probably the most frequent and deadliest jihadist assaults anyplace within the Sahel area.
French forces working with native troops have stepped up operations within the area since early 2020, following the string of assaults on army camps that killed a whole bunch of troopers.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)