Twelve soldiers were killed in a deadly ambush by armed men in western Niger, the army announced Saturday.
The military said the “surprise offensive” unfolded Friday near the village of Sakoira, in the volatile border zone between Mali and Burkina Faso.
In a statement, the army labeled the attackers as “terrorists” but did not attribute the assault to any specific group.
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The tri-border region has long been plagued by extremist violence. Just last month, a jihadi group attacked a village there, leaving 44 civilians dead, an attack the army attributed to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS), AP reported.
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For more than a decade, Niger and its neighbors, Burkina Faso and Mali, have been engulfed in a brutal insurgency fueled by extremist groups aligned with al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
In the wake of military coups across the three nations, the new juntas expelled French forces and pivoted toward seeking security support from Russian mercenary units. They have also pledged to bolster regional cooperation through a new pact, the Alliance of Sahel States.
Despite these efforts, analysts warn that the security landscape across the Sahel, a vast belt along the Sahara’s southern edge has sharply deteriorated since the juntas assumed control, with record levels of violence, including civilian deaths at the hands of both jihadis and government forces.
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