At least 44 civilians lost their lives and 13 others were wounded, four of them seriously, in a terrorist attack on Friday in Fambita, a village in the Tillabéri region of western Niger. The announcement was made Friday evening by Niger’s Minister of the Interior and Public Security, Mohamed Toumba, on the Télé-Sahel television channel.
According to the Minister, the attack took place at around 2:00 pm local time (1:00 pm GMT), when Muslim worshippers were gathered for Friday collective prayer. Heavily armed terrorists, affiliated to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS), surrounded the mosque before carrying out a massacre of unprecedented violence.
Not limiting themselves to this massacre, the assailants then systematically set fire to the market and homes before retreating, the minister denounced. ” These heinous crimes will not go unpunished”, he asserted, adding that “the perpetrators, co-perpetrators, sponsors and accomplices will be hunted down and brought to justice to answer for their acts”.
Fambita is located in the so-called “three borders” zone (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso), a region that in recent years has become a hotbed of insecurity due to the growing activity of jihadist groups.
