5 People Killed During Ramadan Celebrations in Niger

Five people have died in an attack on the village of Fantio, in the western region of Tillabéri, Niger Republic as the country celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Ramadan fasting period.

Local officials reports that the attack happened on Wednesday morning by “a horde of terrorists who came on motorcycles”.

Fantio is a rural commune in the Téra department where a contingent of 1,200 Chadian soldiers has been deployed in the dubbed “three borders” zone between Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali to fight jihadist groups as part of the G5 Sahel multinational force.

The G5 includes five Sahelian countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – which have been working since 2017 to cooperate in the fight against jihadist groups.

“G5-Sahel soldiers have been dispatched to Fantio and will stay in the village for a few days at the request of the governor of the region,” a source close to the authorities in Tillabéri said.

The Tillabéri region is regularly hit by jihadist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

Jihadist attacks on civilians have increased since the beginning of the year in Niger: more than 300 people have been killed in three series of attacks on villages and camps in the west of the country.

None of these attacks have been claimed.

The latest of these large-scale attacks took place on March 21 in the Tahoua region, killing 141 people in a matter of hours in three Tuareg villages and surrounding camps, according to the Nigerien Ministry of the Interior.