Pau Summit postponed after jihadist attack in Niger killed 71 soldiers

The extraordinary Pau summit on the Barkhane force to which the French President Emmanuel Macron had invited his counterparts from G 5 Sahel on December 16 was postponed at the beginning of the 2020. The main cause of postponing the event is the sadden demise of the 71 Nigerian soldiers in the attack on one of their camps located in the west of Niger.

The attack was confirmed by the Nigerian Ministry of Defense. In the statement it stated that heavily armed men and moving motorcycles stormed on Tuesday, the military camp at Inates and made severe attacks. Unfortunately, 71 soldiers were killed leaving 12 wounded, missing and a large number of terrorists were neutralized.

The fighting lasted nearly three hours. The President of Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou took to Twitter to make the announcement and stated that he was interrupting his participation in the Conference on Sustainable Peace, Security and Development in Africa which is being held in Egypt, ‘to return to Niamey’ and there hold, in particular, an extraordinary security council.

The death of 13 French soldiers in a helicopter crash in Menaka (northern Mali) during a fight against jihadists and questions about the utility of the French army in the Sahel are at the origin of this summit which is to gather around Macron, Presidents Mahamadou Issoufou (Niger), Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (Mali), Roch Marc Christian Kaboré (Burkina Faso), Idriss Déby (Chad) and Mohamed Ould Ghazouani (Mauritania).