NIAMEY (Reuters) – Motorcycle gunmen killed six French aid workers, a Nigerian guide and a driver at a wildlife park in Niger on Sunday, officials said.
PHILO PHOTO: Men resting on the banks of the Niger River in Niamey, Niger, February 20, 2016. REUTERS / Joe Penney
The group was attacked in a giraffe sanctuary just 65 km (40 miles) from the capital of the West African country of Niamey, the governor of the Tillaberi region, Tidjani Ibrahim Katiella, told Reuters. “They were intercepted and murdered,” he said.
The six works for an international aid group, Niger’s Defense Minister Issoufou Katambé told Reuters. Officials had previously described them as tourists.
Separately, a spokesman for the French humanitarian aid group ACTED said its staff members were involved.
No one immediately took responsibility for the attack. But France and other countries have warned people against traveling to parts of Niger where militants including Boko Haram and an Islamic State branch operate.
The office of French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that French citizens had been murdered in Niger. It said Macron spoke by telephone with Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou, but did not provide further details.
The Association of Koure Giraffe Reserve Guides published a statement describing the attackers as a “unit of terrorists” and said the dead included its president, Kadri Abdou.
France’s TF1 television channel broadcast images it said were taken from the scene of the burnt-out remains of a 4×4 car with bullet holes in the side.
The reserve southeast of the capital is a popular attraction in Niger, an enormous country bordering seven states in an unstable region including Libya, Mali, Chad, Algeria and Nigeria.
Islamic State militants killed four U.S. soldiers in an ambush in Niger near the Mali border in October 2017, an attack that increased control of U.S. counterterrorism operations there.
France, a former colonial power in the region, also launched in June a coalition of West African and European allies to fight against Islamist militants in the Sahel region that includes Niger.
It has deployed thousands of troops in the arid region south of the Sahara desert since 2013. But militant violence is on the rise.
Report by Moussa Aksar and Boureima Balima in Niamey; Additional reporting by Bate Felix, Richard Lough and Michel Rose in Paris, David Lewis in Nairobi; Edited by Philippa Fletcher, Frances Kerry and Andrew Heavens
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