Sixteen Nigerien soldiers were killed and another reported missing, following an ambush on Saturday May 1 by armed men in the west of the country.
The attack on a National Guard patrol in the Tillia area, in the Tahoua region near Mali, further proves the insecurity that reigns in this area near the “three-border” region, a territory straddling the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali border.
“Our men were ambushed by armed bandits in the Tillia County. This cowardly attack resulted in the death of 16 soldiers, while another six were wounded and one missing,” Ibrahim Miko, the secretary general of the governorate of Tahoua announced on public TV.
He saluted the memory of the victims. “We mourn our dead, but they died with their weapons in hand,” he said during the funeral of Lieutenant Maman Namewa, the commander of the targeted patrol unit.
Last March, a series of attacks in the towns of Intezayane, Bakorat, Woursanat and several other hamlets and camps located in the department of Tillia, region of Tahoua, had an official death toll of 141 people.
Faced with this insecurity, the Chadian army had deployed 1,500 troops in the area of the three borders as part of the G5 Sahel. This alliance between Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad, supported by France, has set itself the task of fighting the armed gangs and terrorist organizations operating in these regions.
CD/fss/abj/APA