At least 17 soldiers have been killed in an attack on a military patrol in West African Niger. A spokesman for the Department of Defense said eleven soldiers were initially missing, and six others were injured.
The attack had already taken place on Tuesday near the border with Mali in a region that uses Islamist extremists as a retreat. According to security sources, the patrol had persecuted terrorists who had attacked a high-security prison some 50 kilometers north of the capital Niamey on Monday. The attack had killed a soldier.
Many attackers, some of whom were traveling on motorcycles, had attacked the soldiers in the Tillabéri region near the village of Tongo Tongo. There, at the end of 2017, a patrol accompanied by US soldiers had been attacked. Four American soldiers were killed. The attack was later claimed by an Islamist terrorist group.
Especially in the western part of the Niger, not far from the borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, Islamist terrorist groups are active, which are difficult to combat by the military in the vast expanse of the Sahel. Some have sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda, others to the Islamic State terrorist militia. Niger, with a population of just over 21 million, is, according to a UN index, the world's poorest state.