GUNMEN ON MOTORBIKES ATTACK VILLAGES IN NIGER KILL AT LEAST 137

Tue 23 March 2021:

Attackers on motorbikes have raided several villages in Niger’s Tahoua region have left 137 people dead, the government has said, in another massacre that has underscored the huge security challenges facing new President Mohamed Bazoum.

The gunmen on Sunday attacked the villages of Intazayene, Bakorat and Wistane, located near the border with Mali, shooting “at everything which moved”, according to a local official.

On Monday, the government said the attacks had left 137 people dead. Local officials have previously given a death toll of at least 60.

Gunmen arriving on motorbikes attacked the villages of Intazayene, Bakorat and Wistane near the border with Mali, shooting “at everything which moved”, a local official said.

“The government condemns these brutal acts perpetrated by individuals who know neither faith nor the law,” Abdourahamane said.

 

Less than a week ago, he read another grim announcement about attacks that ultimately killed at least 66 people.

The government has declared three days of national morning from Tuesday.

The coordinated raids underscore the greatest challenge facing Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s new president whose election victory in a runoff vote last month was confirmed on Sunday by the country’s top court.

Niger, the world’s poorest nation according to the United Nations’ development rankings for 189 countries, is struggling with armed campaigns that have spilled over from Mali and Nigeria, killing hundreds of people and displacing nearly half a million others.

The three villages are located in the arid Tahoua region in western Niger, abutting the Tillaberi region in a border region, a hotspot of the conflict plaguing the western portion of the Sahel for much of the past 10 and is also fuelled by fighters linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

“After the Banibangou massacre, yesterday the terrorists, in the same barbaric way, struck the peaceful civilian populations of Intazayene and Bakorat,” Bazoum said in a Twitter post on Monday, offering “heartfelt condolences to the victims’ relatives”.

Bazoum, elected on February 21, is a former interior minister who was the preferred successor and right-hand man of the outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou.

He has pledged to fight insecurity and ordered army reinforcements to the Tillaberi region after the bloodletting of March 15.