NIAMEY, Niger — Suicide bombers in Niger detonated two car bombs simultaneously on Thursday, one inside a military camp in the city of Agadez and another in the remote town of Arlit at a French-operated uranium mine, killing a total of 26 people and injuring 30, according to officials in Niger and France.
A surviving attacker took a group of soldiers hostage, and authorities were attempting to negotiate their release.
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The timing of the attacks, which occurred at the same moment more than 100 miles apart, and the fact that the bombers were able to penetrate both a well-guarded military installation and a sensitive, foreign-operated uranium mine, highlight the growing reach and sophistication of the Islamic extremists based in neighboring Mali. The Mali jihadists have vowed to avenge a French-led military intervention that ousted them from Mali’s northern cities.
Both attacks were claimed by a spinoff of al-Qaida’s local chapter, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO, said French radio RFI.
The highest toll was in the desert city of Agadez, located almost 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of the capital, where the attackers punched their explosive-laden car past the defenses at a military garrison and detonated inside the base, killing 20 soldiers and 16 others, said Niger’s Minister of Defense Mahamadou Karidjo at a hastily assembled press conference in the capital, Niamey, on Thursday. Three suicide bombers also died, but a fourth escaped and grabbed a group of military cadets, said Interior Minister Abdou Labo.
The attacker was draped in an explosive belt and was threatening to blow himself up along with his hostages. Labo said by telephone that the military was engaging in negotiations with the jihadist. He did not say how many hostages were taken.
Over 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Agadez, a different group of two suicide bombers slipped past a truck to enter a uranium mine operated by French nuclear giant Areva, injuring 14 employees of the French company, one of whom died later. Both suicide bombers were also killed, according to a company statement, the ministry of defense and witnesses.
When France scrambled war planes over Mali and sent in ground troops to try to take back the country’s al-Qaida-held north, the extremists vowed to hit back not just at French interests all over the world, but also at the African governments that helped them. The bomb blasts on Thursday are the most damaging attacks by the Mali-based jihadists to date and succeeded in hitting both an important French asset and the military of Niger, which sent 650 troops to help France combat the Islamists in Mali.
Up until Thursday’s twin attacks, some military analysts had begun to doubt the strength of groups like MUJAO, which has carried out repeated suicide attacks in Mali since January with varying degrees of success. Several of the kamikaze operations succeeded in killing only the bombers themselves. Shaken, the government of Niger has decreed a 72-hour period of national mourning following the heavy toll from Thursday’s attack.
Residents in the two towns immediately remarked on how closely coordinated the attacks appear to have been, taking place just moments apart at 5:30 a.m., a time when many in this majority Muslim nation are prostrating themselves in the first prayer of the day.
Alhousseiny Moussa, a resident of Agadez, was walking to the mosque to pray when he heard the boom coming from the city’s military camp. “I heard the explosion and immediately after, I heard a volley of gunfire. The area where it happened was inside the military camp and it’s now been roped off so we cannot go in. It was right at 5:30 a.m.,” he said.
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Another resident of Agadez, a city situated on the sandy fringe of the Sahara desert, said the car bomb awoke anyone who was still sleeping. “We heard a strong detonation that woke the whole neighborhood, it was so powerful,” explained Abdoulaye Harouna. “The whole town is now surrounded by soldiers looking for the attackers.”
Al-Qaida’s affiliate in Africa and groups allied with them seized the northern half of Mali in April of last year. They pushed into the major towns, setting up their own administration. But for nearly a decade before that, they had already made themselves at home in Mali, using its remote, and lawless northern reaches to train fighters and to hold the European hostages they kidnapped — including many from Niger. In 2008, they grabbed two Canadians on the outskirts of Niger’s capital, including United Nations special envoy Robert Fowler, who was held for 130 days before a ransom was negotiated. Two years later, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb infiltrated the mining town of Arlit, which was the scene of Thursday’s car bombing, grabbing seven employees of French company Areva, and one of its contractors, SATOM, as well as the wife of one of the workers.
Four of them — all French nationals — are still being held by the terror cell and their whereabouts are unknown. The terror group has repeatedly threatened to execute them in retaliation for the French-led intervention in Mali.
On Thursday at 5:30 a.m., an all-terrain Toyota sports-utility vehicle penetrated the SOMAIR mine, where Areva is extracting uranium in Arlit, located 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) to the north of the capital, Niamey, according to residents. The car exploded not far from the machinery used at the mine.
“We saw a car enter the factory and immediately it exploded,” said Agoumou Idi, a worker inside the factory who was reached by telephone. “The terrorists, probably from MUJAO, took advantage of the fact that the entrance gate was open in order to let in a truck carrying the next shift of workers. They used that opening to enter the heart of our factory and explode their vehicle.”
In Agadez, the sand-enveloped streets were barricaded, as was the entrance to the hospital, where the dead and injured soldiers were presumably taken. No one could approach the military base where the standoff with the suicide bomber holding the hostages was ongoing on Thursday afternoon.
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Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Angela Charlton and Sarah DiLorenzo contributed to this report from Paris.
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22/05/2013