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15 die in Niger clashes
01/04/2008 13:18 - (SA)
Niamey - Clashes between rebels and government forces in Niger's northern desert in late March killed at least 15, the army said.
In a statement read late on Monday on national television, the army said 10 insurgents were killed in fighting between March 19 and 29, along with five soldiers.
"The armed bandits set mines throughout the zone, flaunting laws and international conventions," the statement said. Mine explosions were responsible for three of the five soldiers deaths, it said.
Ethnic Tuareg rebels accused the army of killing and terrorising civilians in northern towns. In a statement published on its website over the weekend, the rebel Niger Movement for Justice said government soldiers had killed residents and burned down homes in the northern town of Gougaram.
The group said it wrested control of the town from the army on Sunday. The army statement said it had not been routed from the town.
The army said it captured a number of rebel vehicles in the March clashes, along with weapons and took one of the insurgents prisoner. It also said it seized an "important quantity" of drugs.
The government of this northwest African country had repeatedly accused the ethnic Tuareg fighters waging a low-level rebellion in the north of being bandits and drug smugglers. The rebels said they were fighting to protect ancestral lands that the government wanted to seize for uranium mining.
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