Niger President calls for investigation into problematic France escort

A month after the combat opposed a French escort of Operation Barkhane in the Sahel, Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum has called on France to open an inspection into the combat that took place in November on the route of the military escort of the Barkhane force.

Bazoum assembled this call in a televised inscription as the country glaring 3 years of independence from France.

A detail worn up by Niamey revealed that 3 people had been killed and 17 others wounded, in shootings attributed to the Nigerien forces.

The contrib escort, which arrived in Ivory Coast earlier in the month, had traversed into Burkina Faso before entering Niger on its way to its landing place in Mali.

It was heading for a base at Gao, in central Mali, a pivot for France’s Barkhane operation which is bracing up merge in the Sahel against a jihadist mutiny that began in northern Mali nearly a decade ago.

However, combat blazed up at Tera in western Niger.

French army prophet Pascal Ianni said at the time that “no French soldier was wounded”. However, “two civilian drivers in the combat were wounded through stones strafe at them“.

Niger faces methodical and fatal strikes from jihadist groups associated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organization in the Sahel in the west, and those from Boko Haram and the Islamic State organization in West Africa in the southeast.