A proposed summit between France and leaders of the G5 Sahel which was slated for later this month has been postponed to early 2020 following a deadly attack in Niger, the French Presidency announced.
The summit on France’s Barkhane Force was to have taken place in Pau on December 16 but was called off after 71 Nigerien soldiers were killed in the attack on one of their bases located in western Niger.
The attack was confirmed by the Nigerian Ministry of Defense which, in a statement read on national TV Wednesday evening, reports that heavily armed men traveling on motorcycles stormed the military camp at Inates on Tuesday.
It says aside from the 71 soldiers killed, twelve were wounded, while others are declared missing.
“A significant number of terrorists have been neutralized” it claims.
“This callous attack lasted nearly three hours”, the press release states, noting that “mopping and pursuit operations across the border were underway” to find the assailants whose number is estimated at several hundred.
Informed of the incident, Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou announced on twitter that he was interrupting his participation in the Conference on Sustainable Peace, Security and Development in Africa, hosted by Egypt, “to return to Niamey” and hold an extraordinary security council.
Another consequence of the attack, considered to be the deadliest suffered by the Nigerien army, was the postponement of the Pau Summit that was to be held on December 16.
The summit convened by President Emmanuel Macron was meant to hold talks with his G5 Sahel counterparts over the future of France’s Barkhane Force deployed in the region.
According to the Elysée Palace, the decision to postpone the summit was made after Presidents Macron and Issoufou had a telephone conversation.
They two leaders also agreed to propose to their counterparts, “the beginning of 2020” as the new date for the meeting.
The death of 13 French soldiers in a helicopter crash in Menaka (northern Mali) during a fight with jihadists and questions about the utility of the French army’s presence in the Sahel are the main reasons for the proposed summit.
Poised to attend were presidents Issoufou of Niger, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali, Roch Marc Christian Kabore of Burkina Faso, Idriss Deby of Chad and Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani of Mauritania.
CAT/fss/as/APA