About 70 soldiers killed in attack on Niger military camp

About 70 soldiers were killed in an attack on a remote military camp in Niger near the border with Mali on Tuesday, the Niger army has confirmed. Niger Army Colonel Hassan said the troops came under attack by "heavily armed terrorists, estimated at several hundred." It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the assault. But Islamist militants with links to Islamic State have mounted increasingly lethal attacks across West Africa's Sahel region this year despite the commitment of thousands of regional and foreign troops to counter them.

Security has deteriorated this year across the Sahel, a semi-arid strip of land beneath the Sahara, due to jihadist attacks and deadly ethnic reprisals between rival farming and herding communities.