Suicide bombers in Niger detonated two car bombs simultaneously today, one inside a military camp in the city of Agadez and another in the remote town of Arlit inside a French-operated uranium mine, killing a total of 25 people and injuring 29, according to the ministry of defence.
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 neighbouring Mali.
Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic extremist group the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO, said French radio RFI.
The group is a spinoff of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which along with MUJAO controlled a France-sized chunk of northern Mali for nearly 10 months last year. They were flushed out of the major towns in northern Mali by a French-led military intervention which began in January.
Because the French carried out the bulk of the operations, MUJAO and al-Qaida's chapter in Africa warned that they would hit French interests all over the world in revenge, as well as all African states that help them.
The bomb blasts today are the most damaging attacks by the jihadists in Niger 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.
The highest toll was in the desert city of Agadez, located almost 1,000 kilometers northeast of the capital, where the attackers punched their explosive-laden car past the defences at a military garrison and succeeded in entering the base, said Niger's Minister of Defence Mahamadou Karidjo at a hastily assembled press conference in the capital, Niamey, today. Three suicide bombers also died. The defence minister said the government decreed a 72-hour national period of mourning.
He said that another two suicide bombers died in Arlit. No one else was killed, although Paris-based nuclear giant Areva said in a statement 13 employees of its mine were injured in the 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.
