APA – Niamey (Niger) Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have created the Alliance of Sahel States to fight terrorism in the tri-border area.
In Niger, the army has been the target of a new jihadist attack in the south-west, in the Tillabery region.
“On Thursday 28 September 2023, a unit of Operation ALMAHAOU, on a security mission in Kandadji, was violently attacked by several hundred terrorists on motorbikes,” said General Salifou Mody, Minister of Defence in the transitional government installed by the National Council for the Defence of the Homeland (CNSP) in the wake of the 26 July coup against Mohamed Bazoum.
According to the Defence Minister’s statement, the jihadist raid left 12 soldiers dead, five of them in an accident during the army’s response.
Seven wounded soldiers were evacuated to the Armed Forces Hospital, the document said.
The Nigerien army also lost four vehicles in the attack, but claims to have neutralised “around a hundred terrorists” and “destroyed their motorbikes and weapons in the Tijiane area,” 20 kilometres north-east of Ayorou, still in the Tillabery region.
Since the CNSP came to power, several attacks carried out by the ‘Groupe de soutien à l’Islam et aux Musulmans’, affiliated to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in the border triangle, have resulted in several military casualties.
To combat terrorism in this region, which in recent years has become the heart of the jihadist insurgency in West Africa, the heads of the Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso transitions signed the Liptako-Gourma charter establishing the Alliance of Sahel States.
This new institution also aims to defend the three member countries against any external aggression. It was created against the backdrop of the stand-off between Niger and the Economic Community of African States, which does not rule out the use of force to restore constitutional order in Niamey.
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