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NIAMEY (Reuters) — One hundred folks had been killed on Saturday in assaults on two villages in western Niger, Prime Minister Brigi Rafini mentioned following one of many deadliest days in latest reminiscence for a rustic ravaged by Islamist violence.
Rafini introduced the dying toll in remarks broadcast on nationwide tv on Sunday from a go to to the zone, close to the border with Mali. He didn’t say who was accountable.
Security sources mentioned on Saturday that not less than 70 civilians had been killed in simultaneous raids by suspected Islamist militants on the villages of Tchombangou and Zaroumdareye.
Niger has suffered repeated assaults by militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State close to its borders with Mali and Burkina Faso. The violence is a part of a wider safety disaster in West Africa’s Sahel area that has unnerved Western allies like France, who’ve poured troops and assets into the area.
Niger has additionally seen tit-for-tat killings between rival ethnic communities which were stoked by the jihadist violence and competitors for scarce assets.
Saturday’s assaults got here on the identical day that the electoral fee introduced the outcomes from the primary spherical of the election to switch President Mahamadou Issoufou, who’s stepping down after a decade in energy.
Ruling social gathering candidate Mohamed Bazoum, who completed in first, expressed his condolences on Sunday to the victims.
The assaults, he mentioned in a video he posted on social media, “remind us that terrorist groups constitute a grave threat to cohesion within communities unlike any other.”
Bazoum will face former President Mahamane Ousmane in a second spherical run-off anticipated on Feb. 21.
(Reporting by Moussa Aksar; Writing by Aaron Ross, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Chris Reese)
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