At least three civilians, including two refugees, were killed on Sunday May 31 at the hands of jihadists in Niger. The attackers attacked a site housing Malian refugees in Intikane in the Tahoua region (west of Niger) near Mali.

"Yesterday (Sunday) late at 4.30 p.m. local time (3.30 p.m. GMT), around 50 motorcycle jihadists attacked the Intikane refugee site. Three people were murdered," said Monday 1 June AFP the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Niamey.

The three victims are "the president of the Refugee Committee, the president of the Vigilance Committee for refugees and the representative of the nomadic group of Tahoua (Nigerien customary chief)".

According to the UNHCR, a guard "was kidnapped by the jihadists" who acted in a "well-thought-out procedure".

Nigerien village, Intikane, is a Refugee Reception Zone (ZAR) where 20,000 Malians have lived mixed with the local population since 2013.

Poisoned water

"The jihadists inflicted damage on the camp facilities and notably emptied the food store and destroyed the system which supplies the area with drinking water within a radius of 40 km", explains the UN agency.

The hydraulic system sabotaged by the attackers provides drinking water to the 20,000 Malian refugees, 15,000 other displaced Nigerians who fled their village because of jihadist violence, and all the local population living in this vast desert area, specifies- she.

"It is serious, the terrorists have destroyed our living space," Alessandra Moreli, the UNHCR representative in Niger, told AFP, "who condemns this attack".

"The terrorists destroyed telephone relay antennas" in the area before carrying out the attack, a security source told AFP.

A long list of attacks on refugee camps

This raid lengthens the list of Malian refugee camps attacked by jihadist groups for four years in Niger.

Twenty-two Nigerien soldiers were killed in October 2016 in Tazalit during an attack on a refugee camp. In 2016, two dead Malian refugees were killed in Tabarey Barey, another UN camp in the Tillabéri region. In October 2014, nine members of the security forces were killed and two refugees injured in a similar attack in a third camp in Mangaize.

According to the UN, Niger is home to nearly 60,000 Malian refugees who fled northern Mali who fell in March-April 2012 under the thumb of jihadist groups, largely driven out by an international military intervention launched in 2013 on the initiative from France.

West Niger is the scene of frequent attacks by jihadist groups, notably the Islamic State in the Grand Sahara (EIGS) group. Niger also faces attacks in the east by jihadists from the Boko Haram nebula.

Jihadist violence, often interspersed with inter-community conflicts, claimed the lives of some 4,000 people in 2019 in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, according to the UN.

With AFP

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