NIGER beefed up its troops presence on the border with neighbouring Burkina Faso to counter a perceived “terror threat” liable to force local people from their homes, an security source told AFP on Thursday.
Ruled by a military junta since July 2023, Niger is battling heightened insecurity amid repeated attacks by armed groups, several affiliated to Al-Qaeda or Islamic State.
“The area of Torodi (in the southwest) has experienced several security incidents in recent days,” stated the latest army operations bulletin on its website.
On April 14, a military detachment came under fire “from criminal armed groups” on a road in the area, with six attackers killed.
The army said one soldier was lightly wounded while troops seized motorcycles and weapons.
On 6 April, a “criminal armed group” attacked a neighbourhood and a police station in the town of Makalondi, the army said, but “did not cause casualties”.
Four days earlier, minibuses were also attacked.
“The events logged in Makalondi have caused a movement of local populations to other localities in the region,” the army said.
Therefore, to “reassure the population,” the military had “immediately reinforced its presence” locally to facilitate “the gradual return of the displaced populations”.
Some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Niamey, but just a handful of kilometres from the border, Makalondi has been targeted since 2018 by Islamist groups, despite the massive deployment of anti-jihadist forces reinforced by a state of emergency.
In addition, the army said it had arrested a fortnight ago “an influential member” of the Salafist jihadist JNIM group, without elaborating.
Mali and Burkina Faso, like Niger under military regimes, have similarly suffered regular jihadist attacks in recent years.
The three neighbours recently grouped together in an Alliance of Sahel States and created a unified force to fight jihadist groups in a landlocked space of some 2.8 million square kilometres (1.1 million square miles).
“Our people expect results … We have a historic duty to respond to this legitimate aspiration (to counter attacks) and establishing this unified force must be the manifestation of our categorical refusal to depend on external support,” Burkinabe chief of staff General Moussa Diallo told a meeting in his homeland earlier this week attended by counterparts from Mali and Niger.