At least 12 killed in raids on northern Togo villages

Armed men killed at least 12 civilians in overnight raids on villages in northern Togo, where Islamist militants have staged several recent attacks, two local activists and a medical source said on Friday. Spared until recently by the jihadist violence that has ravaged its northern neighbour Burkina Faso and other countries in the Sahel region for the better part of the past decade, Togo has over the past two months experienced a spate of attacks.

Armed men killed at least 12 civilians in overnight raids on villages in northern Togo, where Islamist militants have staged several recent attacks, two local activists and a medical source said on Friday.

Spared until recently by the jihadist violence that has ravaged its northern neighbour Burkina Faso and other countries in the Sahel region for the better part of the past decade, Togo has over the past two months experienced a spate of attacks. The most recent targeted several villages in northern Togo's Kpendjal district. A local rights activist, who asked not be named for security reasons, said suspected jihadists killed 10 civilians in the village of Sougtangou and 10 in Blamonga.

Another local activist said suspected jihadists had killed at least 12 civilians and a medical source said the death toll was at least 14. They also spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The government issued no immediate comment on the attacks.

The army said on Thursday that it had killed a group of civilians, all teenagers, on Saturday night in an air strike after mistaking them for jihadists. The government declared a state of emergency last month in the Savanes region, where Kpendjal is located, due to the rising insecurity.

Besides Togo, the coastal West African countries of Benin and Ivory Coast have also been attacked over the past year by militant groups whose main activities had previously been concentrated in the landlocked countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.