Three officers and a soldier escorting them have been killed this week in southwest Niger by gunmen who crossed the border from Nigeria, authorities mentioned on Sunday.
“On Wednesday, armed people from Nigeria attacked a car, killing 4 folks,” the military mentioned, with out figuring out the victims.
It mentioned the assailants then “returned to Nigeria”.
Locals mentioned the 4 have been visiting Diffa, a area that has endured a sequence of deadly assaults since 2015 by fighters from Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP).
The Diffa area is on the shores of Lake Chad, which is bordered by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.
Its swampy islands have turn into hideouts for armed jihadist teams.
The Komadougou Yobe river, which kinds a pure border between Niger and Nigeria, had up to now helped defend Diffa from cross-border assaults.
However the water degree has dropped, providing “a number of crossing factors from Nigeria” which enabled ISWAP fighters to assault travellers on the primary street, the place this week’s ambush occurred, the military mentioned.
Because the incident, the regional authorities have imposed an indefinite ban on automobiles “notably 4x4s” from travelling with out a army escort on the street most topic to assaults –- a 70-kilometre (40-mile) stretch linking Diffa city to the city of Maine Sorao.
A former native official informed AFP that ambushers “notably goal top-brand all-terrain automobiles, which they resell in Nigeria”.
Within the western area of Tillaberi, close to the border with Burkina Faso and Mali, Niger’s armed forces are preventing different jihadist teams linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.
On Saturday, a number of hundred folks demonstrated in Tillaberi, asking the army junta in energy in Niger to arrange “fast intervention models” and an “airbase”, and to recruit civilian “volunteers” to assist staunch assaults on the native inhabitants.
The junta, which seized energy in a coup in July 2023, had complained that elected civilian president Mohamed Bazoum was not doing sufficient to cease the assaults.