(Corrects Jan. 9 story to say Nigerien army in paragraphs 3 and
7, not Nigerian army)
NIAMEY, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants
killed 25 soldiers and wounded six others in an attack on an
army post in west Niger near its border with Mali on Thursday,
the government said.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the
attack on the post at Chinagodrar, about 130 miles (209 km)
north of the capital Niamey.
But it coincides with a campaign by Islamist groups
connected to al Qaeda and Islamic State to force the Nigerien
army back from its western frontier with Mali, where government
control of the rural centre and north has all but evaporated
because of the rise of jihadists.
Attackers approached the military post on motorcycles and
other vehicles and were met with resistance from the army and
the air force, the government said in a statement. Sixty-three
assailants were also killed during the raid.
"The Defence Ministry ... offers its condolences to the
victims and wishes the wounded a prompt recovery," the statement
said, adding that a search operation was under way to find those
responsible.
Despite efforts by international forces to stop them,
attacks have risen four-fold over the past year in Niger,
killing nearly 400 people, according to data from the Armed
Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a non-profit research
organization.
They include a raid last month that killed 71 soldiers at
another military outpost about 150 km to the west of
Chinagodrar, believed to be the biggest attack on the Nigerien
military. Security has deteriorated this year across the Sahel, a
semi-arid strip of land beneath the Sahara, amid jihadist
attacks and deadly ethnic reprisals between rival farming and
herding communities.
The region has been in crisis since 2012, when ethnic Tuareg
rebels and loosely aligned jihadists seized the northern
two-thirds of Mali, forcing France to intervene the following
year to beat them back. The jihadists have since regrouped and
expanded their range of influence.