Belmokhtar group threatens more attacks

Niamey: The militant group led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar that claimed twin suicide car bombings in Niger that killed at least 20 people threatened on Friday to launch further attacks in the country.

“We will launch further operations” in Niger, the group said in a statement posted on Islamist Internet forums that also threatened France and countries involved militarily in battling militants in Mali.

Belmokhtar’s group, the “Signatories in Blood”, said in the statement that Thursday’s attacks were its “first response to the statement of the president of Niger (Mahamadou Issoufou), from his masters in Paris that he had crushed the jihad and mujahideen militarily” in the region.

The group threatened more attacks and even to “bring the fight to the interior of his country unless he withdraws his mercenary army” from Mali.

On Thursday, French President Francois Hollande told reporters during a visit to Germany that he will take every measure to protect French assets. “We will also protect our interests, because Arlit is an interest of a large French company: Areva. May everyone understand it well — that we will not let anything happen, and will support the Nigerians’ efforts to halt this hostage-taking and destroy the group behind these attacks.”

Up until Thursday’s twin attacks, some security analysts had doubted the strength of groups like MUJAO, which has carried out repeated suicide attacks in Mali since January with varying degrees of success. Several of the kamikaze operations killed only the bomber.

Residents in the two towns remarked on how closely coordinated the attacks appear to have been, taking place just moments apart at 5:30 am, a time when many in this majority-Muslim nation are laying their carpets toward Makkah in the first of the day’s five prayers.

Alhousseiny Moussa, a resident of Agadez, was walking to the mosque to pray when he heard the boom. “I heard the explosion and immediately after, I heard a volley of gunfire. The area where it happened was inside the military camp, and it’s now been roped off so we cannot go in,” he said.

Al Qaida’s affiliate in Africa and groups allied with it seized the northern half of Mali in April of last year. They pushed into the major towns, setting up their own administration and alarming western nations who saw it as precursor to a new Afghanistan. In fact, for nearly a decade before that, they had already made themselves at home in Mali, using its remote and lawless northern reaches to train fighters and to hold the European hostages they kidnapped — including many from Niger.

In 2008, they grabbed two Canadians on the outskirts of Niger’s capital, including United Nations special envoy Robert Fowler, who was held for 130 days before a ransom was negotiated. Two years later, Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb infiltrated Arlit, grabbing seven employees of Areva and one of its contractors from Paris.