Crowds have died in the deadliest suspected terrorist massacre ever to hit Niger, the government said on Monday, underlining the huge security challenge facing new President Mohamed Bazoum.
Government spokeswoman Zakaria Abdourahamane said 137 people had been killed in Sunday’s raids on villages near Niger’s border with Mali.
“By systematically targeting civilian populations now, these armed bandits have gone one step further into terror and brutality,” Abdourahamane said in a statement read on public television.
Given three days of national mourning for the victims from Tuesday, he promised that the government would strengthen security in the region and bring “the perpetrators of these cowardly and criminal acts” to justice.
Gunmen arriving on motorcycles attacked the villages of Intazayene, Bakorat and Wistane on Sunday and fired “at everything that was moving”, a local official said. The jump in the death toll, which had been given at least 60 earlier Monday, would make Sunday’s attacks the deadliest ever committed by suspected terrorist groups in Niger. The number of deaths in the Mali-Niger border region amounts to 236 in just over a week.
The world’s poorest nation according to the UN’s development ranking for 189 countries, Niger is also struggling with uprisings that have spread across from Mali and Nigeria. Hundreds of lives have been lost, nearly half a million people have fled their homes and devastating damage has been done to the former French colony.
The three villages are located in the arid Tahoua region of western Niger, next to the Tillaberi region in a border zone notorious for terrorist attacks. On March 15, a suspected terrorist killed 66 people in the Tillaberi region, attacked a bus carrying shoppers from the market town of Banibangou and then raided the village of Darey-Daye, killing residents and torching grocery stores.
On the same day, an attack claimed by the Daesh group in the so-called “tri-border area” where the borders of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali converged left 33 Malian soldiers dead.
“After the Banibangou massacre, the terrorists yesterday, in the same barbaric way, struck the peaceful civilian populations of the Intazayene and Bakorat,” Bazoum said in a tweet on Monday, asking for “heartfelt condolences to the victims’ relatives.”
Bazoum’s election was confirmed on Sunday by the constitutional court of the poor Sahel nation. On January 2, 100 people were killed in attacks on two villages in the Mangaize district of Tillaberi.
The massacre, one of the worst in Niger’s history, occurred between two rounds of the country’s presidential election. One year earlier, on January 9, 2020, the Niger Army lost 89 men in an attack on a military camp in Chinegodar, a month after 71 troops died in an attack on Inates.
Bazoum, elected on February 21, is a former interior minister who was the successor and right-wing man to outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou. He has promised to fight insecurity and ordered the reinforcement of the army to the Tillaberi region after the bloodshed on March 15.
Turkey on Monday condemned the deadly terrorist attacks in northwestern Niger.
“We are deeply saddened that at least 40 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on March 21, 2021 in settlements in the Tillia city of Tahoua region, in Niger,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We strongly condemn this heinous attack.”
It expressed condolences to the families of those who lost their lives, as well as to the “friendly and fraternal” people and the Nigerian government.
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