At least two Niger Police officers have been killed in a suspected terrorist attack on a police station in a town near the Burkina Faso border, the country’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
After last Saturday’s attack on a forestry checkpoint in Tamou, also near Niger’s border with Burkina Faso, there has been a new attack on a police station, where the attackers also stole military equipment.
Following the attack, the Niger authorities launched ground and air search operations for the suspects, which enabled the country’s Armed Forces to find «enemy elements» who had escaped to a clandestine gold mining operation located east of the town of Tamou, according to Niger’s Ministry of Defense.
The country is facing a terrorist threat in the west from Al Qaeda’s branch in Mali, the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM), and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). Likewise, the Diffa region, bathed by Lake Chad, is the scene of relatively frequent attacks by Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA).
