Several hundred armed men, many on motorbikes, attacked a Niger army base near the border with Mali, leaving at least 34 soldiers dead and 14 wounded, the Defence Ministry said.<\/p>\n
The attackers – described as “mercenaries” by the ministry\u2014used eight vehicles and more than 200 motorbikes in the raid on the base in Bani-bangou on Thursday, according to the statement read out on state TV.<\/p>\n
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on the army base in a statement on its Telegram channel on Friday.<\/p>\n
Niger, like other countries in West Africa’s Sahel region, is battling Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.<\/p>\n
Troops carried out aerial and ground search operations to secure the area after the attack, the ministry said without going into more detail on the assault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several hundred armed men, many on motorbikes, attacked a Niger army base near the border with Mali, leaving at least 34 soldiers dead and 14 wounded, the Defence Ministry said. The attackers – described as “mercenaries” by the ministry\u2014used eight vehicles and more than 200 motorbikes in the raid on the base in Bani-bangou on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1129,27],"tags":[187,383],"class_list":["post-16694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-mali","tag-niger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}