A search was in progress on Wednesday for several missing Niger soldiers since an ambush by armed men the day before left several of their equals injured, security sources said.
A military patrol was ambushed Tuesday afternoon near the village of Tongo Tongo in the western Tillaberi region near the border with Mali. One of the military vehicles had set off an explosive device.
Several troops soldiers were injured and evacuated to the capital Niamey, a security source “several soldiers were still not responding to calls,” said another, adding that “search operations are ongoing.”
“ a patrol of 52 Niger soldiers stumbled upon a group of heavily-armed men at Baley Beri, close to Tongo Tongo. Heavy fighting, which lasted more than two hours, ensued. According Actuniger the news site.
Twenty soldiers made it back to their base at Ouallam on three vehicles, while the rest went missing, it said, citing local and security sources.
This is the same region where four American and six Niger soldiers were killed in a jihadist attack in October 2017.
Niger, Chad and Cameroon, is suffering the leak out of jihadist group Boko Haram’s decade-long uprising to establish a hardline Islamic state in Nigeria’s northeast.
The conflict has killed more than 26,000 people and left 1.8 million homeless. Officials are not releasing the name of fort Carson Colo, a soldier who went missing during land navigation exercise on Monday, but you can bet the “lost lieutenant” will fly anyway.
Similar some soldier got lost late Monday in one country and was discovered Wednesday morning by a passing motorist on Highway, according to a Wednesday release from Fort Carson.
