Some 200 people have died in the last six days in alleged

jihadist attacks

in western Niger, more than half on Sunday in the Tahoua region, according to balances provided by official sources.

Attacks on Sunday by armed men against villages

in Niger's

Tahoua

region

"resulted in the death of 137 people," the Nigerian government announced Monday night.

"By systematically attacking civilians, these armed bandits are taking their horror and barbarism a step further," denounced the government spokesman,

Zakaria Abdourahmane

, in a statement read on public television.

The previous death toll on Sunday was 60, according to authorities.

Sunday's attack followed other attacks in various towns in the

Tillabéri region

on March 15, which killed 66 civilians, according to a balance by Interior Minister

Alkache Alhada.

This increase in attacks poses a great challenge to the new head of state,

Mohamed Bazoum

, who will succeed

Mahamadou Issoufou

after his victory in the February elections was confirmed on Sunday by the Constitutional Court of Niger.

On Sunday, armed men traveling on motorcycles

"fired at everything that moved"

in the villages of "Intazayene, Bakorat and Wistane", as well as in "surrounding camps" in the Tahoua region, a local official said.

The Tahoua region is neighboring that of Tillabéri and both are

close to the border with Mali.

The Tillabéri region is located in the area known as "the three borders",

on the borders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso,

regularly hit by jihadist groups affiliated with Al Qaida and the Islamic State (IS).

On March 15, suspected jihadists carried out several attacks on vehicles returning from the large weekly market in Banibangou.

They also attacked the village of Darey-Daye, killing its inhabitants and setting cars and barns on fire.

In total, 66 deaths were recorded.

On the same day, an attack claimed by the IS group against the Malian army in this "three-border zone" left

33 soldiers dead.

So far, the Tillabéri region has been the scene of the bloodiest attacks.

On January 2,

100 people were killed

in attacks in the Ouallam area, Tillabéri, by armed men who also arrived by motorcycle.

Mohamed Bazoum,

elected president on February 21, pledged to combat insecurity in the country, one of the most impoverished in the world and also facing the rebellion of the Nigerian jihadist group

Boko Haram

in the southeast.

"After the Banibangou massacre, terrorists wreaked havoc yesterday [...] against the peaceful civilians of Intazayene and Bakorat," Bazoum lamented in a tweet on Monday, in which he conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims.

After the March 15 massacre, the Nigerian army sent reinforcements to Tillabéri.

In addition, Chad has deployed a contingent of

1,200 soldiers in the area of ​​the three borders,

within the framework of the anti-jihadist device "G5 Sahel" that groups together five countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad) since 2017.

Likewise, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have the

support of the French anti-jihadist operation Barkhane,

which has 5,100 troops deployed in the Sahel.

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