Seven killed while playing, others seriously injured. A Nigerian army plane was in pursuit of armed men
The target were gunmen, as there are many raging fiercely in southern Niger. But twelve children who were playing outdoors fell under the bullets and rockets fired in an air raid from neighboring Nigeria. At least seven of them died, another five are seriously injured.
“It was a mistake,” immediately declared Chaibou Aboubacar, the governor of the southern Nigerian region of Maradi. The Nigerian armed forces “made a mistake with an air strike on the border, resulting in civilian casualties on our territory in the village of Nachade”. They wanted to hit “armed bandits,” he said, but they “missed the mark.” “The parents – he added – were participating in a ceremony and the children were probably playing.” Of the children who lost their lives, “four died instantly and three did not survive their injuries,” added the governor, who this morning visited the graves of the children, who were immediately buried. “Our teams on the spot report that the children have suffered fractures and injuries of various kinds. We helped provide first aid before they were transferred to the hospital in Maradi, but some of them did not survive, “said Souley Harouna, representative of Doctors Without Borders in Niger, according to which, in addition to the 7 dead children, the injured there are a total of 16, of which 7 are children.
But that of the bloodthirsty and heavily armed gangs that border the states of Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara, in northern Nigeria, is a plague that afflicts the province of Maradi and other southern areas of Niger. Since 2018, Niamey has responded with armed patrols that scour the troubled border to try to prevent raids by Nigerian gangs, who kill, kidnap people for ransom money, prey on traders and raid cattle which they then take with them to Nigeria. The Maradi region, which already hosts no less than 100,000 refugees fleeing jihadist and gang violence in Nigeria – official UNHCR figures – is exposed to incursions and risks, according to the think tank International Crisi Group, to become the third front of Niger’s fight against jihadist terrorism. The latter could or would already be infiltrating the folds of common gang violence and tensions between different ethnic groups.
The country is already caught in the grip between the Nigerian Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram and their dissident splinter of the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP) in the south-east, and the western front, where ISIS and Al Qaeda. It is no coincidence that Niger was included in the new broadened strategy of fighting jihadism in the Sahel by France and its European allies after the recent announcement of the withdrawal from Mali.
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