(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
NIAMEY, June 20 – Several hundred armed men, many on motorbikes, attacked a Niger army base near the border with Mali, leaving at least 34 soldiers dead and 14 wounded, the Defence Ministry said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attackers – described as “mercenaries” by the ministry – used eight vehicles and more than 200 motorbikes in the raid on the base in Bani-bangou on Thursday, according to the statement read out on state TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on the army base in a statement on its Telegram channel on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Niger, like other countries in West Africa’s Sahel region, is battling Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Troops carried out aerial and ground search operations to secure the area after the attack, the ministry said without going into more detail on the assault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) NIAMEY, June 20 – Several hundred armed men, many on motorbikes, attacked a Niger army base near the border with Mali, leaving at least 34 soldiers dead and 14 wounded, the Defence Ministry said. The attackers – described as “mercenaries” by the ministry – used eight vehicles and more than 200 motorbikes in the raid on the base in Bani-bangou on Thursday, according to the statement read out on state TV. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on the army base in a statement on its Telegram channel on Friday. Niger, like other countries in West Africa’s Sahel… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47952,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47950\/revisions\/47952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}