Niger's junta leader accuses France, Benin and Ivory Coast of being behind airport attack

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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Niger's military leader has accused the presidents of France, Benin and Ivory Coast of supporting armed groups that attacked an air force base in the capital, wounding four soldiers and damaging an aircraft.

Niger's forces responded quickly to the assault early Thursday, killing 20 of the attackers and arresting 11 others, state television reported.

“We remind the sponsors of those mercenaries, who are Emmanuel Macron (president of France), Patrice Talon (president of Benin) and Alassane Ouattara (president of Ivory Coast), we have sufficiently heard them bark, and they should now in turn be prepared to hear us roar,” Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani told state television late Thursday.

He didn't provide any evidence to back up his accusation.

Videos that appear to be from the scene captured loud blasts and the sky glowing following explosions that began around midnight and lasted about two hours in the area of Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, the capital of the West African country.

Niamey’s airport is a strategic hub that hosts military bases, the headquarters of the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali Joint Force, and a large uranium stockpile at the center of a dispute with French nuclear company Orano.

West African airline Air Côte d’Ivoire said that one of its aircraft, parked on the tarmac of the Niamey airport, was hit during the exhange of gunfire, resulting in impacts to the aircraft’s fuselage and right wing.

Niger state television reported that one of the assailants killed was a French national, as footage showed several bloodied bodies on the ground. It provided no evidence.

No armed group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Niger has struggled to contain deadly jihadi violence that has battered parts of Africa’s Sahel region, where neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali also are run by military juntas.

In 2025, al-Qaida and Islamic State group-backed militants escalated their campaigns in the Sahel, further threatening the stability of the fragile region and of Niger, which was the key security ally of the West in the region until a 2023 military coup.

Since seizing power, Niger’s military rulers — along with those in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso — have cut ties with France and other Western powers and turned to Russia for military support to fight insurgencies.

The juntas regularly accuse the presidents of Benin and Ivory Coast, two West African countries that maintain close relations with France, of acting as proxies for Paris.

Under the military juntas, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have seen a surge in attacks and have become more vulnerable to the armed groups, experts say.

The sophistication and boldness of the airport attack in Niger — including the possible use of drones — suggest that the assailants may have had inside help, said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Laessing said Friday that earlier successful attacks elsewhere in the region appear to have increased the groups’ confidence, leading them to target more sensitive and strategically important sites.