- Niger declared three days of national mourning in the wake of the massacre of at least 100 people in two villages by Islamist militants over the weekend.
- Witnesses said that over a hundred armed assailants on motorcycles surrounded the villages and started firing indiscriminately.
- Local authorities have been overrun by militants linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State in the tri-border area known as Liptako-Gourma.
NIAMEY
– Niger has declared three days of national mourning following the massacre of
100 civilians in two villages in the western region of the country where Islamist
militants have carried out a series of attacks.
The government said an investigation had been launched to find the perpetrators. Witnesses have said that over a hundred armed assailants on motorbikes surrounded the villages and started firing indiscriminately on Saturday.
The government said reinforcements had been sent to the area near the tri-border region of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, known as Liptako-Gourma, where local authorities have been overrun by militants linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
The attack highlights the fragile security in the West Africa Sahel region, and in Niger in particular, ahead of a presidential election runoff in the country on 21 February.
The weekend killings were among the worst in Niger's recent history.
They have forced survivors and the population of four neighbouring villages to flee, the United Nations Refugee Agency said in a statement on Monday, adding that at least 1 000 people were on the move from the area, trying to reach the town of Ouallam around 80km away.
Many were making the journey on foot, the agency added.
It said that Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali were at the epicentre of one of the world's fastest-growing displacement and protection crises, hosting 851 000 refugees already, and nearly 2 million internally displaced people.
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