Niger ministry says 39 killed in attacks near Burkina Faso

The “barbaric acts” saw 21 people killed in Libiri and 18 in Kokorou, including children, the Niamey’s Defence Ministry said. File
| Photo Credit: AP

“Thirty-nine people have been killed in two attacks in recent days in western Niger, near the border with Burkina Faso,” Niamey’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday (December 14, 2024).

“Two horrific tragedies happened in the communities of Libiri and Kokorou, criminals cornered by constant operations by defence and security forces launched attacks on defenceless civilian populations,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

The “barbaric acts” saw 21 people killed in Libiri and 18 in Kokorou, including children, the Ministry said.

The operations took place from December 12 to 14, the statement said without detailing when the attacks happened.

The communities are located in the Tera border region, an area teeming with fighters which has been subjected to particularly bloody jihadist attacks in recent days.

“One of the latest attacks saw gunmen kill 21 civilians in an assault on a goods convoy,” local sources said on December 7, 2024.

On Wednesday (December 11, 2024), both the BBC and RFI reported that jihadists had killed 90 soldiers and over 40 civilians in Tera’s Chatoumane.

Niger’s junta dismissed reports of the attack and deaths as “baseless assertions” and a “campaign of intoxication”.

Although AFP was unable to verify those numbers from an independent local source, a Western security source told AFP that 90 to 100 people died in Tuesday’s (December 10, 2024) attack.

The military government suspended BBC radio for three months following its report, the latest in a slew of Western media to be sanctioned by the junta since it seized power in a July 2023 coup.