This is one of the worst massacres of civilians in this country regularly targeted by jihadist groups and which is in the midst of a presidential election.
Le Monde avec AFP
One hundred people were killed on Saturday January 2 in attacks on two villages in western Niger, one of the worst massacres of civilians in this country regularly targeted by jihadist groups and which is in the midst of the presidential election.
“We have just returned from the scene of the attacks” carried out on Saturday. “In Tchoma Bangou, there were up to 70 dead, and in Zaroumadareye 30 dead,” Almou Hassane, the mayor of Tondikiwindi, which administers the two villages, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday. located in the department of Ouallam. “There were also 25 injured, some of whom were evacuated to Niamey and Ouallam for treatment,” he added.
The attack was carried out “by terrorists who came aboard a hundred motorcycles”. To attack the two villages, 7 kilometers apart, the attackers “split into two columns: while one attacked Zaroumadareye, the others attacked Tchoma Bangou,” the mayor said.
region regularly targeted by attacks
The two villages are located about 120 kilometers north of the capital, Niamey, in the Tillabéri region, bordering Mali and Burkina Faso. This region known as “the three borders” has been regularly targeted for years by attacks by jihadist groups.
This double attack was announced on Saturday but without precise assessment by local elected officials. According to a senior official in the Tillabéri region, it was committed in broad daylight, around noon, at the same time as the proclamation of the results of the first round of the presidential election on December 27, which largely led (39.33 %) the candidate of the ruling party, Mohamed Bazoum, former interior minister, who has promised to step up the fight against jihadist groups.
Outgoing president Mahamadou Issoufou said in Sunday a tweet of his “deepest condolences to the populations of Tchoma Bangou and Zaroumadareye, following the cowardly and barbaric attack on their villages”.
Seven soldiers were killed on December 21 in the West, where the Islamic State in the greater Sahara (EIGS) is regularly rife. And thirty-four people were massacred on December 12 in the village of Toumour, in the south-east, an attack claimed by Boko Haram.
Nearly 500,000 refugees and displaced persons
Niger organized a series of elections in December, first municipal and regional on December 13, then presidential and legislative combined on December 27. The second round of the presidential election is due to take place at the end of February.
The Tillabéri region has been placed under a state of emergency since 2017. To fight against the jihadists, the authorities banned in January 2020 the motorbike circulation day and night and the closing of certain markets which they believe feed “the terrorists”.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Niger has been fighting for years against Sahelian jihadist groups in its western part and the Islamists of the Nigerian group Boko Haram in the south-east, without succeeding in defeating them, despite regional cooperation and ‘Western military aid.
The Nigerien army suffered in the West two disastrous defeats a year ago, against the military camps of Inates (71 dead at the end of 2019), and Chinégodar (89 dead at the start of 2020). Jihadist attacks in the West and South-East have claimed hundreds of lives since 2010, and caused an estimated 500,000 refugees and internally displaced persons to flee their homes (including 160,000 in the West), according to the UN.