At least three civilians have been killed in a coordinated attack on a camp housing thousands of Malian refugees in western Niger, according to the United Nations.
Some 50 fighters launched a "well-planned operation" against the Intikane refugee camp in the Tahoua region on Sunday afternoon, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Niamey told AFP news agency.The three victims were the head of a refugee committee, the head of a refugee vigilance group and a representative of a Tahoua nomadic group, the UNHCR said on Monday.
The attackers also abducted a guard and sabotaged the camp's water supply.
"The jihadists inflicted damage on the camp's facilities, in particularly emptying the food supplies and destroying the system which supplies drinking water to the area within a radius of 40km (25 miles)," the UN agency said.
Alessandra Morelli, the UNHCR's representative in Niger, denounced the attack.
"It is very serious, the terrorists have destroyed our space to live," Morelli told AFP.
A security source told the news agency that before the attack, the fighters destroyed telephone relay antennas in the area.Alongside the local population, the town of Intikane is hosting some 20,000 Malian refugees and 15,000 internally displaced Nigerien citizens - all of whom fled their villages due to violence perpetrated by armed groups.
The violence has hit Mali and Burkina Faso the hardest, rendering large swaths of those countries ungovernable, but it has also spilled into Niger, which shares long and porous borders with its two neighbours. Fighters with links to al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) group have increasingly mounted attacks across the Sahel in recent years despite the presence of thousands of regional and foreign troops in the region.
Niger is home to nearly 60,000 Malian refugees who fled their country's north after it fell under the control of al-Qaeda-linked groups in 2012, according to the UN. A French-led military intervention the following year pushed them out, but parts of Mali remain out of government control and awash with armed groups.
Niger has also endured unrest in its southeast from Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province, a breakaway group from Boko Haram.
In January, the UN envoy for West Africa told the UN Security Council that attacks have increased fivefold in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016, with more than 4,000 deaths reported in 2019.
Two main figures of Algeria's Hirak protest movement will soon be freed at the president's initiative, the leader of an opposition party said.
Karim Tabbou, a veteran opposition figure and secretary-general of Algeria's Socialist Forces Front (FFS), is serving a one-year term for an "attack on the integrity of national territory". Samir Benlarbi has been held in preventive detention since March 7."President Abdelmadjid Tebboune assured me that he would use his constitutional prerogative to ensure that Tabbou and Benlarbi regain their freedom," Sosiane Djilali told AFP news agency on Tuesday.
"It's solemn commitment on his part," said the Jil Jadid party leader after a meeting with Tebboune that he had requested to discuss the two cases.
In the Algerian judicial system, the president has the right to pardon prisoners. In principle, that right applies only to those whose convictions are final, such as Tabbou.
Tabbou, who turned 47 on Tuesday, is one of the most prominent figures, if not the best-known, of the Hirak movement which led to the downfall last April of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after 20 years in power.
Abdulghani Badi, the lawyer representing the jailed activists, posted on his Facebook page that Benlarbi has been transferred to Kolea prison southwest of the capital, Algiers. Weekly anti-government protests rocked Algeria for more than a year and only came to a halt in March due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, with the authorities banning marches - although the opposition had already suspended its gatherings.
Abdennour Toumi, a Paris-based Algerian journalist, said Tabbou and his group are considered as "hardliners" which explains why the government has taken stronger measures in dealing with them.
Commenting on the expected release, he said the move is a "pre-emptive" measure designed to deny the Hirak the ability to use activists as a "rallying call" should the resurgence of mass protests begin.
"The message the president is trying to send to the public is of a conciliatory gesture to people in Algeria and foreign audience, especially France," he said.
But the Algerian government continues to target opponents, journalists, independent media and internet users.
According to the National Committee for the Release of Detainees (CNLD), some 60 people are currently held on charges linked to the protest movement.
After causing the downfall of Bouteflika last April, the Hirak movement has continued demanding an overhaul of Algeria's governance system, which has been in place since independence from France in 1962.
Angry at unemployment, corruption and an elderly elite seen as out of touch with the young, Algerians began taking to the streets in February last year to protest, initially against Bouteflika's plans to remain in office, and then for the removal of all remnants of a political and military establishment that dominated the country for decades.
