Niger attack: Islamic State claims responsibility for killing 28 soldiers

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday, May 16 for an attack on Niger soldiers near the Mali border, the group's Amaq news agency said, without providing evidence.

The death toll from Tuesday's attack has risen to 28, an army spokesman said earlier. Militants killed four US soldiers at the same place in 2017. Militants belonging to affiliates of both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group are active in the region and are known to conduct cross-border raids.

The soldiers were in pursuit of militants who attacked a high-security prison 50km on Tuesday outside the capital, Niamey, a government spokesman told the BBC.

"One of the soldiers' vehicles drove into a landmine and then the assailants started firing at our soldiers," Mr Zakariyyah told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme on Tuesday. Initially, it was reported that 17 soldiers had been killed in the ambush.

The government spokesperson did not identify the perpetrators of the new attack, which is one of the deadliest against the military in Niger's west in recent years.

Niger also highly confronts threats in its southeast from another Islamic group, Boko Haram and a splinter group affiliated with Islamic State, which are both based in Nigeria but frequently strike in neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

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