At least 22 soldiers were killed in Niger on Thursday when unknown assailants attacked a camp for Malian refugees, the West African nation’s Prime Minister, Brigi Rafini said.
The attack targeted a camp in the village of Tessalit in Niger’s Tahoua region, around 525 km (326 miles) northeast of the capital Niamey, Reuters reported.
“We received information of an attack on the camp in Tessalit. For the moment we are told there are 22 dead, but that is not a total death toll,” he said in comments broadcast on state-run television TeleSahel. “The death toll could increase.”
Rafini gave no further information concerning the suspected identities of the attackers or whether any civilians had been killed or wounded.
The camp’s residents are Malians who fled to neighbouring Niger after Islamist militants, some with links to al Qaeda, seized Mali’s desert north in 2012.
A French-led military intervention drove back the insurgents a year later but violence is on the rise across the region’s arid Sahel band.