Niger’s president has fired the army’s chief of staff after attacks against security forces have killed at least 174 security force members since December.

President Issoufou Mahamadou’s action on Monday came after the death toll from an attack by Islamic extremists on Niger’s military last week rose to at least 89, making it the most deadly attack of its kind in years in the West African nation.

The fatalities from the attack Thursday rose dramatically from the 25 soldiers that the government initially said were killed last week.

In addition to the soldiers killed in that attack on the Chinagrodrar Advanced Military post near the border with Mali, at least 77 extremists were killed by Niger’s army and its foreign allies, most notably France and the United States, according to a statement issued Sunday by the government.

The military’s response, which included air support, pushed the extremists from Niger, the government said. There will be three days of national mourning beginning Monday, the government announced.

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Ahmed Mohamed will be replaced by Brig-Gen. Salifou Modi, who was the military attache for Niger in Germany, the presidential statement said Monday. He also dismissed the Secretary General of the Ministry of National Defense and the Chief of Land Staff.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack, but the attack bore the hallmarks of an Islamic State-linked group that said it was behind the December ambush near the town of Inates that killed 71 soldiers and was previously the most deadly attack of its kind in Niger in years.

“The government calls on the population to be more vigilant, more serene and united, and reaffirms its determination to continue the fight against terrorism until the final victory,” the government statement said.

The increase in the death toll as a summit opens in Pau, France, that is to be attended by French President Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger Mauritania.

Those countries make up the G5 Sahel groups that are working with France against the threat of extremists in the region. The crisis of extremist violence across the Sahel is deepening, particularly in Burkina Faso and Mali.

Islamic extremists also targeted and killed 14 Niger security force members who were escorting election officials on Dec. 25 near Sanam, about 200 kilometers (124.27 miles) from the capital of Niamey. Officials from the national electoral commission were in the area to conduct a census before next year’s vote.

Niger’s military has received training for years from both American and French forces, but these attacks underscore the threat extremists still pose.

Source: AP

French President Emmanuel Macron will on Monday host counterparts from five Sahel countries seeking more backing in the fight against a murderous jihadist uprising even as France’s military role is being questioned.

Recent tensions between France and Sahel governments could make for a tricky exchange at the six-way talks in the southwestern city of Pau, to be attended also by the heads of the UN, African Union, and EU Council.

Macron insists his counterparts from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Chad must use the occasion to express public support for France’s military presence — by far the largest foreign contribution to the fight against African jihadists aligned to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

Visiting the region last month, the French president complained of a lack of “clear political condemnation of anti-French feelings” on the ground.

“I see opposition movements, groups, who denounce the French presence as a neo-colonial, imperialist,” Macron said in Niamey, adding he was loath to send soldiers to countries where their presence was not “clearly wanted”.

Jihadist fighters have recently stepped up their campaign against military and civilian targets, and earlier this month, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that “terrorist groups are gaining ground.”

France has 4,500 soldiers stationed in the Europe-sized region as part of Operation Barkhane, supporting poorly-equipped, impoverished local armies that in 2017 launched a joint anti-jihadist G5 Sahel force.

‘Down with France’ 

On Friday, hundreds of people gathered in the Malian capital Bamako to protest the presence of foreign troops, carrying posters reading: “Down with France, Barkhane must leave” and “France is a brake on our development.”

Despite the French presence and a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force dubbed MINUSMA in Mali, the conflict that erupted in the north of that country in 2012 has since spread to its neighbours, especially Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of civilians have been killed and more than a million displaced, with hundreds of troops dead, including dozens of French ones.

On Monday, Macron will gather Mali’s Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Burkina Faso’s Roch Marc Christian Kabore, Niger’s Mahamadou Issoufou, Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Ghazouani and Chad’s Idriss Deby.

They will lay a wreath and observe a minute of silence for seven soldiers from Pau who died in action in Mali — among 13 French troops killed in a helicopter crash while hunting jihadists last November.

The presidents will then gather for the summit Macron has said must clarify the “political and strategic framework” of the Sahel military campaign.

After the talks, for which three hours have been set aside, the leaders will regroup for a working dinner where they will be joined by Guterres, European Council President Charles Michel and African Union Commission President Moussa Faki.

‘Remobilise’ 

Mali’s Keita has said the summit will be “decisive” and “will allow us to put on the table all the questions, all the grievances, all the solutions”.

But he insisted the G5 leaders would demand a “respectable and respectful relationship” with France. Kabore of Burkina Faso has described Macron’s recent insistences as “lacking in tact”.

Issifou said the summit would “launch an appeal for international solidarity so that the Sahel and France are not alone in this fight”.

The Pau meeting was postponed from December after a jihadist attack claimed the lives of 71 Niger soldiers. And last Thursday another attack by jihadists left 89 Niger soldiers dead.

On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the summit would serve “to remobilise and adapt ourselves to the new reality” of the jihadist onslaught, which analysts say appears to have become bolder, more complex, and better armed.

Paris will also use the occasion to repeat its call on other Western nations to help step up the fight.

Last year, only $300 million of $400 million pledged by the international community in cash and material support to the Sahel was delivered, according to the French presidency.

NGOs on Friday urged that civilians caught in the crossfire not be forgotten at Monday’s talks.

“The military response in the Sahel is part of the problem,” said Maureen Magee of the Norwegian Refugee Council. 

“Last year, military operations in Mali have pushed more than 80,000 people to flee. Engagement in the Sahel must put the protection of the populations at the heart of the response.”

(AFP)

Issiaka Ouattara, a key figure in the years-long unrest that gripped Ivory Coast at the start of the century, has died in a New York hospital at the age of 53, associates said on Monday.

“He died from illness this morning in a New York hospital,” where he had been admitted several weeks ago, Affoussiata Bamba-Lamine, an attorney linked to former rebel commander Guillaume Soro, told AFP.

“One of the pillars of September 19 2002 has fallen,” Soro said on Twitter, referring to the start of a revolt in northern Ivory Coast that split the country in two.

The crisis came to a violent head in 2010 when President Laurent Gbagbo, who had ruled the country since 2000, was declared winner in elections, an outcome disputed by the international community.

Opposition candidate Alassan Ouattara, who was not related to Issiaka Ouattara, began a military offensive, eventually capturing and arresting Gbagbo in April 2011 with the support of French troops.

Ouattara — nicknamed Wattao — was one of the the rebellion’s most prominent “zone commanders” (“com’zones” in French), well known for his taste in bling jewellery, gap teeth and giant stature.

He was given control over the rich cocoa-growing region of Vavou, in central-western Ivory Coast, at the head of an armed unit called Anaconda.

The com’zones played a key part in bringing Ouattara to power.

They were rewarded with major positions, despite complaints by civil society that their men had committed numerous crimes during the 2010-211 fighting.

“Wattao” was appointed second in command of the elite Republican Guard, and had recently been promoted to the rank of senior colonel.

He had been suffering from acute diabetes, according to the website Jeune Afrique.

Source: AFP

Chad has ended a mission spanning several months fighting Boko Haram in neighbouring Nigeria and withdrawn its 1,200-strong force across their common border, an army spokesman told AFP on Saturday.

“It’s our troops who went to aid Nigerian soldiers months ago returning home. They have finished their mission,” spokesman Colonel Azem Bermandoa told AFP. “None of our soldiers remains in Nigeria,” he added, without specifying whether they might be replaced following Friday’s pullout.

“Those who have come back will return to their sector at Lake Chad,” Bermandoa said.

However, Chad’s general chief of staff General Tahir Erda Tahiro said that if countries in the region which have contributed to a multinational anti-jihadist force were in agreement, more troops will likely be sent in.

“If the states around Lake Chad agree on a new mission there will surely be another contingent redeployed on the ground,” Tahiro told AFP.

At least 35,000 deaths

Boko Haram began the insurrection in Nigeria a decade ago, leading to at least 35,000 deaths with violence spilling over into Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

A Boko Haram faction aligned with Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) jihadists is highly active around Lake Chad where the group has training bases on the Niger border and regularly carries out raids on military bases and regional security forces.

Last month saw 14 people killed with 13 more listed as missing after an attack on a fishing village in western Chad.

Countries in the region have banded together to fight Boko Haram and ISWAP with support from civilian defence committees leading to Chad contributing 1,200 troops.

Those troops have now pulled back across the border to be “deployed in the Lake Chad region to strengthen security along the border,” a senior local official told AFP.

Cameroon says it is battling an upsurge in Boko Haram attacks and, according to an Amnesty International report published last month 275 people, including 225 civilians, were killed there last year.

Source: AFP

Fourteen civilians, mostly schoolchildren, died Saturday when a roadside bomb blew up their bus in northwestern Burkina Faso, a security source told AFP.

Four people were seriously hurt in the blast in Sourou province near the Mali border, the source added, as children returned to school after holidays.

“The vehicle hit a homemade bomb on the Toeni-Tougan road,” a second security source said. “Most of the dead are schoolchildren.”

Meanwhile, the army reported an attack against gendarmes at Inata in the north on Friday, saying “a dozen terrorists were neutralised”.

Security sources said the bus was carrying high school students returning from the Christmas holiday

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but jihadist violence in Burkina Faso has been blamed on militants linked to both Al-Qaeda and Islamic State groups.

The deaths came the week after 35 people, most of them women, were massacred in an attack on the northern city of Arbinda and seven Burkinabe troops were killed in a separate attack on their army base nearby.

Burkina Faso, bordering Mali and Niger, has seen frequent jihadist attacks which have left hundreds of people dead since the start of 2015 when Islamist extremist violence began to spread across the Sahel region.

The north of the country has been worst hit, with the capital Ouagadougou not immune to attacks.

In a televised address on Tuesday President Roch Marc Christian Kabore insisted that “victory” against “terrorism” was assured.

The entire Sahel region is fighting jihadist insurgency with help from Western countries, but has not managed to stem the bloodshed.

Five Sahel states – Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad – have joined forces to combat terrorism in the fragile region that lies between the Sahara and Atlantic.

Backed by former colonial power France, the G5 Sahel was created to great fanfare in 2014.

The centre piece of its strategy has been an initiative, launched in July 2017, to pool 5,000 troops from the five countries to wrench back control from ruthless jihadist groups.

But, hamstrung by insufficient funds, training and equipment, the force has only now reached a complement of 4,000 troops, and for many analysts seems to be losing the battle.

The nimble rebels have spread from Mali to Burkina Faso and Niger, as well as Chad.

Their hit-and-run raids are inflicting a mounting human, economic and political toll, sparking fears that the coastal countries to the south are next in line.

Since 2015, increasingly deadly Islamist attacks in Burkina have killed more than 750 people according to an AFP count, and forced 560,000 people from their homes according to UN figures.

(AFP)

Central African police will return to the PK5 neighborhood of the capital Bangui for the first time since 2013 after an exercise to disarm militiamen in the area.

Government troops and UN forces collected weapons from vigilante groups in the area following deadly clashes between traders and militia fighters.

The PK5, the commercial centre of Bangui has been closed to law enforcement agencies since conflict broke out in the Central African Republic in 2013. Traders have been paying protection money to militiamen.

A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in the country said the blue helmets had been deployed to beef up the police.

Tired of being extorted by vigilantes, some traders had armed themselves, setting the stage for the deadly confrontations in December.

Despite a peace deal with armed groups last year, the weak central government in Bangui has struggled to govern with vast areas of land still under the control of militias and rebel groups.

Source: Africa News

A military transport plane crashed on Thursday after taking off from an airport in Sudan’s West Darfur, killing 18 people on board, according to the military.

The Antonov 12 plane crashed five minutes after taking off from al-Geneina, killing its crew of seven as well as three judges and eight other civilians, including four children, the statement said.

The cause of the crash is being investigated.

Al-Geneina, which is the capital of West Darfur and lies close to Sudan’s border with Chad, has seen deadly clashes between ethnic groups in recent days.

There is a heavy military presence around the city, which has received security reinforcements and visits by senior officials this week. 

(Source: Reuters)

Former Ivory Coast political leader Charles Blé Goudé said Monday he had been sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison by an Ivorian court over murder, rape and torture charges. 

Blé Goudé was cleared of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in the Hague this year, along with his former boss, Ivory Coast ex-president Laurent Gbagbo.

But following his acquittal, an Ivorian court brought a fresh trial against him over the 2010-2011 bloodshed which followed a disputed vote in the West African nation. 

The former aide to Gbagbo, who has remained in the Netherlands following his ICC trial pending a possible appeal by the prosecution, told AFP the Ivorian court had convicted him on Monday.

He said he was “surprised by the verdict”, adding that he had been sentenced to 20 years in prison, 10 years deprivation of his civil rights, and a fine of 200 million CFA francs ($340,000) to be paid to the victims.

The court has issued an arrest warrant for him, he added. 

About 3,000 people died in the turmoil that swept Abidjan — once one of Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities — in the aftermath of the November 2010 presidential polls when Gbagbo refused to accept defeat to bitter rival Alassane Ouattara, who remains in power.

Leonard Lebry, the prosecutor general at the Court of Appeal in Abidjan has previously said the case against Blé Goudé — once dubbed the “general of the streets” for his ability to mobilise Gbagbo supporters during the conflict — was “wider” than the ICC prosecution and covered different events. 

“The court will try him (Blé Goudé)” for allegations of “torture, murder, rape”, Lebry said last month.

Gbagbo, the first former head of state to stand trial at the ICC, and Blé Goudé were tried over responsibility for murder, attempted murder, rape, persecution and “other inhumane acts” during five months of violence, both pleading not guilty.

They were released by the ICC to live in Belgium in February under conditions including that he would return to court for any prosecution appeal against his acquittal.

Blé Goudé is living in the Netherlands under similar conditions.

Last month the Ivorian court rejected an appeal over the January 2018 sentencing of Gbagbo and three aides for the “robbery” of the Central Bank of West African States (Bceao) during the post-election crisis. 

The opposition has claimed Ouattara is attempting to prevent Gbagbo returning to the country ahead of 2020 elections expected to be a crucial test for Ivory Coast, which has long been west Africa’s top economic performer and is the world’s leading cocoa producer.

The court conviction comes in the same month that an arrest warrant was issued for former rebel leader and would-be Ivory Coast presidential candidate Guillaume Soro, who aborted his planned return to the country at the last minute.

(AFP)

At least 30 people were killed in fighting between militiamen and traders in a restive district of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, a security official and a local imam said Thursday.

“Thirty bodies have been brought to the mosque,” said Awad Al Karim, the imam of the Ali Babolo mosque in a district called PK5 that became a haven for many Bangui Muslims at the peak of Christian-Muslim clashes in the country.

A security official, who asked to remain anonymous, also put the number of dead at at least 30, without providing any further details.

The fighting began after traders in the district took up arms to oppose taxes levied by militia groups, the imam said.

Bursts of automatic fire and explosions were heard on Wednesday evening and on Thursday morning, according to an AFP journalist who was in a neighbouring district.

The head of the African Red Cross, Antoine Mbaobogo, said the toll “stood at 23 at 4:00 pm (3:00pm GMT) but could now be 33,” adding that there were still bodies near the market.

Neither the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA nor the CAR authorities have been able to assert control over the PK5 district.

And MINUSCA did not provide any exact toll from the fighting, saying only there had been “dozens of victims”.

MINUSCA spokesman, Bili Aminou Alao, said a rapid response force had been sent to the area.

“Part of the market and some vehicles have been burned,” he said.

“Between 40 and 50 shops have been burned down, as well as four or five houses,” said Patrick Bidilou Niabode, head of the CAR’s civil protection service.

Voluntary firefighters put out two fires which had been spreading in the market but were unable to tackle a blaze at two houses because of heavy gunfire, he added.

Powder keg

The CAR is one of the world’s poorest and most volatile countries.

It has been gripped by sporadic violence since 2014, after then-president Francois Bozize was ousted in a coup.

Fierce fighting then erupted between predominantly Christian and Muslim militia, prompting the intervention of former colonial power France, under a UN mandate.

Attempts to broker a lasting peace have repeatedly broken down and most of the country lies in the hands of armed groups, who often fight over the country’s mineral resources.

The PK5 district is a powder keg. In April 2018, MINUSCA, responding to appeals by local traders, launched an anti-militia operation named Sukula (“Clean-up” in the CAR language of Sango).

The operation ended bloodily with the death of about 30 people and a hundred wounded, sparking a wave of anger among local people.

The CAR’s long conflict has forced nearly a quarter of the country’s 4.7 million people to flee their homes.

The United Nations estimated in September that two thirds of the population depends on humanitarian aid to survive.

The country is ranked next-to-last after Niger on the 2018 UNDP’s Human Development Index, which compares longevity, education, and income per capita. Life expectancy is just 52.9 years.

(AFP)