50,000 flee Niger as Boko Haram attacks

Niamey — About 50,000 people have fled a town in Niger’s troubled southeast after deadly attacks by Boko Haram insurgents, the United Nations said yesterday.

The attacks began Friday against a military post in Bosso in Niger’s Diffa region, killing 26 soldiers including two from neighbouring Nigeria.

“An estimated 50,000 people or so fled,” UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

A total of 55 insurgents from the Nigeria-based Islamist group were killed and “many” injured, according to authorities.

Edwards said most of those fleeing the violence walked westwards to Toumour, around 30km west of Bosso.

“Many people are reportedly traumatised and worried about their safety. People are sleeping in the open and urgently need shelter and other assistance,” he said.

A local journalist working with Radio Anfani told AFP he was sheltering in Toumour with no food, along with many others who fled the violence.

“The Boko Haram gunmen stayed in Bosso from 18:30 (17:30 GMT) on Friday to 03:00 on Saturday, burning the military barracks, police facilities and local administration office before looting shops and carting away food supplies,” he said.

“Everybody started leaving the town and surrounding villages at dawn after the gunmen had left.”

He said that the gunmen used heavy artillery which allowed them to overrun the town’s garrison.

“They came in large numbers shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is Greatest],” he said.

The journalist, who declined to be named, said that he subsequently learned that the fighters returned later on Sunday and “engaged troops redeployed to the town in fierce battle”.

“The troops retreated, leaving Boko Haram militants in control of the town,” he said, although the claims could not immediately be verified.

However, Niger’s defence minister Assoumana Malam Issa has said that the military had regained control of the town.

Edwards said some of those displaced had moved on from Toumour and were heading to the town of Diffa, around 140km west of Bosso, and northwards towards a camp for internally displaced people that is already nearing its maximum capacity of 10,000.

“The welfare of these people and others forced to flee the violence in Bosso is of great concern,” he said.

The latest attack was among the deadliest by the jihadist group in Niger since it began launching raids in the country in February 2015 from its stronghold in neighbouring Nigeria.

At least 240 000 people have been displaced in the Diffa region since then.

UNHCR, which has not had a presence in Bosso since the Boko Haram raids began nearly a year and a half ago, said it was working with the authorities and local partners to co-ordinate the response to the mass exodus.

“A team will be en route to the Diffa region this week,” Edwards said.

Boko Haram’s seven-year insurgency has devastated infrastructure in Nigeria’s impoverished northeast and forced around 2.1 million people in the country to flee their homes, according to UNHCR.

The unrest has left at least 20 000 people dead in Nigeria and made more than 2.6 million homeless.

Meanwhil, The United Nations has released new estimates showing that more than 10,000 refugees died attempting to cross the Mediterranean waters into Europe since 2014.

“You’ve now had since the start of 2014 – when this phenomenon of rising numbers across the Mediterranean happened – 10,000 deaths. That threshold has been crossed just in the last few days,” UN Refugee Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said yesterday.

The UN official said the number has been rising rapidly in the past few months, meaning that a new record could be set by the number of refugees dying while attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

“This is clearly an appalling number of deaths that have occurred in the Mediterranean, just on Europe’s borders just in the past couple of years,” Edwards said, calling on the international community to put more efforts at finding a solution to the crisis.

He said the “extremely worrying dynamic” of the deaths of refugees should remind the world that there must be a “viable alternative and regular means of dealing with these movements.”— AFP.