Not less than five person have been killed in an attack in Fantio village, in the western region of Tillabéri near Mali, in Niger as the country celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday which marks the end of the Muslim Ramadan.
The local official confirmed the incident in a statement “… the attack took place this (Wednesday) morning in the village of Fantio. The toll is five dead and two seriously injured,”
They also suspect this attack was carried out “by a horde of terrorists who rode in on motorcycles.”
Fantio is a rural commune in Téra where a contingent of 1,200 Chadian soldiers have been deployed in the so-called “three borders” zone between Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali to fight terrorist groups as part of the G5 Sahel multinational force.
To prevent another attack from happening in the area, “G5-Sahel soldiers which includes five Sahelian countries- Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger have been dispatched to Fantio and will stay in the village for a few days at the request of the governor of the region,”
Terrorist attacks on civilians have increased since the beginning of the year in Niger: more than 300 people have been killed in three series of attacks on villages and camps in the west of the country.
According to the Nigerien Ministry of the Interior, the latest of these large-scale attacks took place on March 21 in the Tahoua region, killing 141 people in a matter of hours in three Tuareg villages and surrounding camps.