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Report:
Terrorist attack on uranium plant — Damage forces closure of
facility — Up to 50 people wounded
Islamist
bombers kill 20 in Niger attack
24
May, 2013
NIAMEY
(AFP) - Islamist militants staged twin suicide car bombings on an
army base and a French-run uranium mine in Niger on Thursday, killing
at least 20 people in retaliation for the country's military
involvement in neighbouring Mali.
Niger's
Defence Minister Mahamadou Karidjo said the last Islamist was
neutralised at the army base and denied early reports that a suicide
attacker had held young army recruits hostage.
The
attacks come just four months after Al-Qaeda linked militants seized
a desert gas plant in neighbouring Algeria in a siege that left 38
hostages dead, also in retaliation against the intervention in Mali.
"Everybody
has been subdued, the operation is over," Karidjo told AFP late
Thursday, several hours after the attacks, the first of their kind in
the impoverished former French colony.
The
Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the
Islamist groups which seized control of northern Mali last year
before being driven out by French-led troops, claimed the near
simultaneous bombings at the Agadez army base and a uranium mine in
northern Arlit.
"Thanks
to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of
Islam in Niger," MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui told AFP.
"We
attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war
against sharia (Islamic law)," he said after MUJAO's first such
attacks in Niger.
French
President Francois Hollande vowed to help Niger "destroy"
the militants and a Niger security said French special forces were
involved in efforts to end the assault.
The
first car bomb went off at dawn at the army base in Agadez, the
largest city in mostly desert northern Niger.
Eighteen
soldiers and a civilian were killed along with four attackers at the
army base, Interior Minister Abdou Labo said.
He
said a fifth bomber had locked himself up in an office with several
trainee officers as hostages but Karidjo denied any soldiers had been
held although he did not provide details on the sequence of events.
"It
is not a hostage-taking and there are no hostages. It was someone who
was trying to flee and we have brought him under our control,"
he said.
About
30 minutes after the first attack, a suicide bomber blew up a car at
the Somair uranium mine and processing facility as employees reported
for work at the site, which is majority-owned by France's Areva.
Areva
said one person was killed at the mine located some 250 kilometres
(150 miles) north of Agadez, but did not identify the victim. It
added that 14 others were wounded.
An
employee told AFP that "a man in military uniform driving a
four-by-four packed with explosives mixed in with the Somair workers
and blew up his vehicle in front of the power station at the uranium
treatment facility."
"Company
managers told us the suicide bomber was killed in the explosion,"
he said.
A
source at Areva in Niamey added that "the damage had forced the
closure" of the uranium plant.
Somair
is 64-percent owned by Areva and 36-percent owned by the state of
Niger.
Areva,
the world's second-largest uranium producer, condemned the blast as a
"terrorist attack" on its website and said Nigerien
authorities had stepped up security measures at its facilities.
Islamist
groups have carried out several kidnappings in Niger in recent years,
especially in the north.
Areva's
Arlit operation has been targeted by Islamist groups before. In
September 2010, seven employees of Areva and a subcontractor were
abducted by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) at the site. Four
Frenchmen are still being held by their kidnappers.
Areva
extracts more than a third of its uranium Niger and has operated
there for more than 40 years.
The
European Union as well as Algeria, which suffered its own deadly
attack by Islamists at a gas plant in January, both strongly
condemned the Niger bombings.
The
United States, which has drones based in Niger to carry out
surveillance missions in support of the Mali intervention, also
condemned the attacks and called for the hostages' release.
The
Niger government has declared three days of mourning for the victims.
Niger
is part of the African-led Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA), a
regional military mission launched to help reclaim northern Mali from
AQIM and two allied Islamist groups that seized the vast desert
territory in the chaotic aftermath of a March 2012 military coup.
French
troops have so far led the operation against the Islamists, which was
launched in January and has pushed the radicals from the territory
they had brutally ruled.
