NAIROBI, Kenya — An explosion at a small hotel located near a police station in northeastern Kenya killed four people, including three officers, and wounded several others on Monday, authorities said.

The blast in the town of Mandera, which is on the border with Somalia, was caused by an improvised explosive device that had been planted at the hotel and was detonated as a crowd of people sat down to eat breakfast, police said.

Mandera police chief Samwel Mutunga said that two of those wounded were in critical condition and would be flown to the capital, Nairobi.

Investigators have blamed east Africa-based extremist group al-Shabab for the attack. The group, which hasn’t claimed responsibility for the explosion, has staged major attacks in Kenya and neighboring Somalia.

The latest attack followed another one on Sunday in coastal Kenya’s Lamu County, where two police reservists were killed. 

The area has a forest, which has often been the site of security operations because it’s a known hideout of al-Shabab militants. 

During a police operation in Garissa County on Sunday, officers recovered materials to make IEDs, an AK-47 rifle and two magazines. Three people escaped during the raid.

The area is near the Kenya-Somalia border, from where militants have in the past infiltrated and launched attacks.

The Kenyan government had last year announced plans to reopen the border with Somalia, but later postponed the reopening because of extremist attacks.
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abuja, nigeria — Nigerian authorities on Monday slapped four counts of tax evasion on cryptocurrency exchange company Binance and said it was seeking collaboration with Interpol to arrest an official of the company who fled custody last week.

The charges stemmed from an investigation of the company’s Nigerian office for alleged attempts to manipulate Nigeria’s currency.

Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Services said Monday that Binance had flouted four tax laws by failing to pay company income tax, failing to pay value added tax, not complying with tax return filing obligations and facilitating tax evasion for Binance users.

The government also said Binance had failed to register for tax purposes with authorities.

Binance in the past has denied any wrongdoing in Nigeria. The company did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

Nigerian authorities on February 26 detained two of the company’s executives — Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen, and Nadeem Anjawalla, a British Kenyan.

Eze Onyekpere, founder of the Center for Social Justice, said the arrests and charges were largely expected.

“It shouldn’t be surprising that they may have violated Nigerian laws,” Onyekpere said. “Nigeria is not the only country that has been charging the executives with violating their laws. The only reasonable thing to do is to bring them before the court and be given the opportunity to defend themselves. Due process and fair hearing must be followed.”

Meanwhile, on Monday, the office of the national security adviser said Anjawalla had escaped detention. The security adviser said authorities were working with international police to obtain a warrant for his arrest.

Binance said it was aware one of its officials was no longer in custody.

Nigerian authorities introduced bold reforms last year, including currency controls, in a bid to boost the economy.

But months after their implementation, the naira lost about 70 percent of its value. Authorities say companies like Binance played a role by trying to manipulate the currency.

But public finance expert Isaac Botti said it couldn’t have happened if the government hadn’t been so negligent toward firms like Binance that exploited the system to their advantage.

“Our system has been designed to be porous, and this is the advantage these guys take,” Botti said. “They understand the system. In a sane clime, you do not create room for this kind of porosity in your system.”

Earlier this month, Binance ended all transactions and trading in Nigeria’s local currency and said any remaining balances would be automatically converted into tether — a cryptocurrency stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.
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DAKAR — Senegal opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye was set to be declared the country’s next president after his rival from the ruling coalition called him Monday to concede defeat. 

Results trickling in since polls closed Sunday evening in the first round of a delayed presidential election rapidly suggested Faye, 44, may have clinched an outright majority. The trends announced on local media sparked street celebrations by his supporters in the capital Dakar. 

Ruling coalition candidate Amadou Ba, 62, initially called these celebrations premature and said a run-off vote would be needed to determine the winner. 

But he then called Faye on Monday to offer his congratulations, a government spokesperson told journalists. 

“In light of presidential election result trends and while we await the official proclamation, I congratulate … Faye for his victory in the first round,” Ba said in a statement. 

A peaceful transition of power in Senegal would mark a boost for democracy in West Africa, where there have been eight military coups since 2020. 

Some of the juntas that seized power have cut ties with traditional powerbrokers in the region such as France and the United States and turned instead to Russia for help in their fight against a jihadi insurgency spreading through countries that neighbor Senegal. 

Senegal’s international bonds rose on reports that Faye was close to being declared a winner, reversing sharp falls from earlier in the day. 

Official results are expected to be announced by the Dakar appeals court Friday. The electoral commission has not yet communicated on the tallies counted so far out of 15,633 voting stations. 

Many hope the vote will bring stability and an economic boost to Senegal after three years of unprecedented political turbulence in one of West Africa’s only stable democracies, which is set to start producing oil and gas this year. 

“I am happy to see there is a wind of change,” said Tall, who joined revelers during the night as supporters waved Senegalese flags, lit flares and blasted vuvuzelas (molded plastic horns). 

“It is wonderful because democracy has won. Many thought it would not happen,” he said, only wishing to give his first name.

Young voters 

Several opposition contenders had also conceded defeat to Faye during the night, including Anta Babacar Ngom, the only woman running. 

Ba was the candidate backed by outgoing President Macky Sall, who is stepping down amid a drop in popularity after two terms in office marred by economic hardship and violent anti-government protests. 

Faye has not publicly spoken since he cast his vote. He owes much of his success to the backing of firebrand opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, who was barred from running due to a defamation conviction. 

The two former tax inspectors have campaigned together under the slogan “Diomaye is Sonko,” promising to fight corruption and prioritize national economic interests. 

They are particularly popular among young voters in a country where more than 60% of people are under 25 and struggle to find jobs. 

Police crackdowns on protests, the government’s failure to cushion rising living costs and concerns Sall would seek to extend his mandate beyond constitutional limits buoyed the opposition. 

Anger crystalized around Sonko’s prosecution only grew when authorities sought to postpone the vote, initially scheduled to take place in February, by 10 months. 

Investors are meanwhile wary about a potential change in leadership to an anti-establishment government that may not pursue the same business-friendly policies seen under Sall’s government that has attracted investments into infrastructure.
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The southern African nation of Malawi has declared a state of disaster over drought in 23 of its 28 districts and the president says it urgently needs more than $200 million in humanitarian assistance, less than a month after neighboring Zambia also appealed for help.

Malawi is the latest country in the region to have its food supply crippled by a severe dry spell that’s been linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon.

A third country, Zimbabwe, has also seen much of its crops decimated and is considering following suit, underlining concerns raised by the U.N. World Food Program late last year that numerous nations in southern Africa were on the brink of a hunger crisis because of the impact of El Niño.

The WFP said there were already nearly 50 million people in southern and parts of central Africa facing food insecurity even before one of the driest spells in decades hit.

USAID, the U.S. government’s aid agency, said that more than 20 million people in southern Africa would urgently need food aid in early 2024, partly due to the El Niño effect.

Last month was the driest February in 40 years for Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to the WFP’s seasonal monitor, while Malawi, Mozambique and parts of Angola had “severe rainfall deficits.”

Millions in southern Africa rely on the food they grow to survive. Corn, the region’s staple food, has been badly affected by the drought.

El Niño is a natural, recurring weather phenomenon involving the warming of the sea surface in parts of the Pacific Ocean. It has impacts on global weather, including causing below-average rainfall in southern Africa. Some scientists say that climate change is making El Niños stronger and their impacts more extreme.

The 2015-2016 El Niño also brought a severe drought for southern Africa, the region’s worst in 35 years, according to the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

Humans aren’t the only ones affected, with conservation officials in Zimbabwe reporting the rare occurrence of at least 100 elephants dying in a national park late last year because of waterholes drying up in the drought.

Before the national disaster announcements by Malawi and Zambia, the WFP and USAID had already launched a program to feed 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe facing food shortages — nearly 20% of that country’s population.

British charity Oxfam said this month that more than 6 million people in Zambia — 30% of its population — are now facing acute food shortages and malnutrition, with the next crop growing season a year away.

Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera said he had been on a tour of his country to discover the extent of its drought crisis, and a preliminary assessment by the government found about 44% of Malawi’s corn crop had failed or been affected, and 2 million households were directly impacted. He said the country of 20 million people needed around 600,000 metric tons of food aid and called on the international community for help.

Malawi has been repeatedly hit by weather extremes in recent years, emphasizing how some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries are feeling the worst effects of climate change even as they contribute the least to global emissions.

Cyclone Freddy killed hundreds in Malawi last year, one of a succession of strong cyclones that have ripped through various parts of southern Africa in the last five years.

In early 2022, tropical storms and floods contributed to Malawi’s worst outbreak of the water-borne disease, cholera. More than 1,200 people died in the outbreak that lasted for months, according to the World Health Organization. Zambia is also currently experiencing a major cholera outbreak.
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N’DJAMENA — Chad’s Constitutional Council on Sunday cleared 10 candidates for this year’s long-awaited presidential election, including interim President Mahamat Idriss Deby and the country’s recently-appointed prime minister. 

The central African nation is scheduled to hold the first round of a presidential election in May as part of a transition back to democracy from junta rule. 

Deby initially promised an 18-month transition to elections after he seized power in 2021, when his long-ruling father was killed in clashes with rebels. 

But his government later adopted resolutions that postponed elections until 2024 and allowed him to run for president, triggering protests that were violently quelled by security forces. 

In December, Chadians voted in favor of a new constitution that critics said could help cement Deby’s grip on power as it allowed him to run for the presidency. 

Deby confirmed his intention to run earlier this month.  

The candidate list released on Sunday included opposition leader Succes Masra, appointed as prime minister of the transitional government in January. 

It is the first time is Chad’s history that a president and a prime minister will face each other in a presidential poll.  

A staunch opponent of Chad’s junta, Masra had fled the country after dozens were killed when security forces cracked down on demonstrations in the capital N’Djamena in October 2022. 

The first round of voting is scheduled to take place on May 6 and the second round on June 22, with provisional results due on July 7. 

Chad’s military government is one of several juntas currently ruling in West and Central Africa. There have been eight coups in the region since 2020, sparking concerns of a democratic backslide. 

It is the first of those transitional authorities to organize elections. 
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LONDON — As the United Nations observes World Water Day on Friday, there is a growing risk of conflict over water resources as climate change takes hold, the international body said.

Meanwhile, nongovernmental aid agency Oxfam accused global corporations of “grabbing” water from poorer countries to boost profits.

Declaring this year’s theme Water for Peace, the U.N. warned that “when water is scarce or polluted, or when people have unequal or no access, tensions can rise between communities and countries.”

“More than 3 billion people worldwide depend on water that crosses national borders. Yet only 24 countries have cooperation agreements for all their shared water,” the U.N. said. “As climate change impacts increase and populations grow, there is an urgent need within and between countries to unite around protecting and conserving our most precious resource.”

In South Africa’s largest city, Johannesburg, the taps have been running dry for several weeks, affecting millions of people.

On the outskirts of the city in Soweto, thousands of people have been lining up to collect water in bottles and buckets from tankers that bring in water from outside the city.

“It has been a serious challenge, a very challenging time for my age that I have to be here carrying these 20-liter buckets,” Thabisile Mchunu, an older Soweto resident, told The Associated Press on Monday. “And the sad thing is that we don’t know when our taps are going to be wet again.”

Crumbling infrastructure is partly to blame for the water shortages in Johannesburg. But scientists say worsening climate change is causing reservoirs to dry up in South Africa and many other parts of the world.

The United Nations estimates that 2.2 billion people live without safely managed drinking water.

Scientists from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say roughly half of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, with poorer nations in the Global South the worst affected.

 

Water “grabbing”

In a report published Thursday, Oxfam accused major global corporations of “grabbing” vital water resources.

“The private sector is grabbing and polluting this resource at the expense of local populations in order to make profits, further increasing inequalities. Droughts exacerbated by climate change affect agriculture and therefore the economies of the countries that depend on it, contributing to increased poverty, food insecurity and health problems for the inhabitants, particularly in the Global South,” the report said.

Oxfam accuses richer countries and multinational corporations of shifting water shortages to poorer regions by importing water-intensive products such as fruit, vegetables, meat, flowers and bottled water from overseas.

The report says agriculture accounts for 70% of water withdrawals, including through irrigation systems, to support the meat industry and biofuels.

“It is part of a neocolonial logic aimed at satisfying the consumption needs of the countries of the North at the expense of the countries of the South,” Oxfam said.

Its analysis suggests the private sector is failing to reduce its impact on water resources.

Of the “350 corporations that have been analyzed through the database — which account for half of the world’s agricultural revenue — only one in four of them are declaring they are reducing water use and pollution,” Quentin Ghesquiere, an agriculture and food safety adviser at Oxfam France, told VOA.

Government regulation

Oxfam also noted that large corporations are permitted to withdraw water, even when local populations face restrictions. It highlighted the activities of the French-owned multinational food products company Danone.

“Danone, in May 2023, continued to extract water from aquifers [in France] despite the restrictions that applied to local populations, in full legality. In the same year, the company made profits of almost 900 million euros and paid out 1.2 billion euros in dividends to its shareholders,” the Oxfam report said.

In a statement to VOA, Danone said that managing water sustainably is a priority, adding that “we have accelerated our innovations and investments to reduce, on a voluntary basis, water withdrawals from our bottling site.”

“Since 2017, we have invested 30 million euros to modernize our production lines, which allowed us to reduce our withdrawals by 17% over the period 2017-2023, maintaining volumes sold,” the Danone statement said.

The Oxfam report recommends stronger regulation and calls for “ambitious funding for adaptation in developing countries and universal access to water.”
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Manzini, Eswatini — Traditional medicine, or “muti,” is an important part of Eswatini’s culture. However, an increasing demand for muti has placed some of the southern African kingdom’s animal species at risk of extinction. That’s something conservationists and molecular biologists want to change.

Molecular biologist Zamekile Bhembe, who works for the USAID-funded EWild Laboratory at the University of Eswatini, is fighting poachers and trying to get them convicted for their crimes.

She said poaching for traditional medicinal purposes is a leading cause of biodiversity decline, and she wants stronger regulations to protect wildlife.

“Every time you see biodiversity declines, there will be some sort of poaching involved,” she said. “As a country, we cannot deny that we are using these resources as our traditional medicine. It’s just that we need a way of regulating.”

For generations, the people of Eswatini have held traditional beliefs and values close to their hearts. This is reflected in the fact that more than 80% of the population still consults traditional healers, or “witchdoctors,” for advice and healing.

These healers use a wide range of plant and animal species to create traditional medicine, drawing on knowledge passed down through generations. However, excessive hunting has endangered the local populations of pangolins, crocodiles, vultures and owls, leading to calls for more sustainable practices.

Makhanya Makhanya, president of the Witchdoctors Association, is a widely renowned traditional healing practitioner in his own right. He said the role of traditional healers needs to be protected.

Such healers, he said, have served Eswatini for generations, providing healing and support to those in need. But he said current laws do not reflect the reality of their work. He wants to see regulations that recognize the traditional healers’ role in society and allow them to continue their work.

Patrick Maduna, a South African citizen, said he travels from neighboring South Africa to Eswatini to seek traditional medicinal solutions. His preference for traditional healing shows the complex relationship between modern and traditional medicine in Eswatini.

“I came all the way from South Africa to Swaziland for traditional attention,” he said. “I have been using the same traditional doctor since 2006, I have been coming to the same place. For me to come and get traditional attention, for me, it’s like therapy. I have never, ever gone to the hospital.”

Maduna said if there were laws in Eswatini to limit the poaching of animals for traditional medicine, he believes the so-called witchdoctors would comply with the rules.
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Johannesburg — One of South Africa’s leading news websites has filed a complaint with the country’s Press Council, alleging that another media company is trying to discredit reporters who investigated the owner’s business practices.

News24 and industry analysts claim that the Independent Media group is failing to respect the usual “firewall” that exists between owners and editorial departments.

Independent Media is a multi-platform company with numerous newspapers and websites. News24 claims that it uses those publications to put out hit pieces on its critics, including op-eds that News24 claims are written under fake bylines, and which try to discredit other reporters.

The dispute comes after an Independent Media website, IOL, published an op-ed comparing News24 legal reporter Karyn Maughan to a Nazi propagandist.

Maughan regularly reports on court cases involving Iqbal Survé, the chair of Sekunjalo, a South African private equity company. Survé is in court fighting the decisions by several major banks to close his companies’ accounts on the basis that they pose “reputational risks.”

An op-ed, published under the byline Edmond Phiri on March 3, accused Maughan of unfairly reporting on Survé’s legal woes.  

The graphic that went with the article depicted Maughan, who is white, in front of an apartheid flag and accused her of racism in her reporting on Sekunjalo, a Black-owned company.

Maughan’s colleagues deplored the op-ed as a hit piece.

Pieter du Toit, assistant editor for investigations at News24, told VOA they have sought legal advice and filed a complaint to the Press Council.

The complaint, he says, will be “one of the first times, if not the first time, that one media house has lodged a complaint against another media house.”

“The interests of Independent’s owner Iqbal Survé have become so intertwined with the interests of the media company that they have become completely inseparable,” he added.

A News24 investigation published in March claimed that Survé was “waging a public-relations war, using a team of pliant journalists, PR staffers, and seemingly fictitious opinion writers to polish his image and attack journalists critical of him.” 

The investigation found no evidence of a writer named Edmond Phiri living in South Africa. When News24 contacted Independent Media’s editor in chief to ask for the op-ed writer’s contact details, they were given an address at an encrypted email service.  

When they wrote to Phiri asking for an interview, they received a bizarrely worded response that a digital analyst said appeared to be partially AI-written.  

“It’s pretty clear to us, based on the evidence that we were able to gather … that this writer, and other writers, simply do not exist as human beings,” said du Toit.

“The only conclusion that we can reach is that these are all bots and/or AI-generated opinion pieces, or opinion pieces written under pseudonyms, purely designed to denigrate and attack another media house.”

News24 is not the first to allege that Independent Media uses fake writers. Journalist Ferial Haffajee wrote a similar article in The Daily Maverick in 2022 citing a report by nonprofit data journalism lab Code for Africa.  

That report found no evidence that an Independent Media writer named “Jamie Roz,” who had also been publishing pieces defending Sekunjalo’s business interests, existed.

Independent’s response

Asked for her response to the News24 investigation, Independent Media editor in chief Adri Senekal De Wet, referred VOA to a statement by Sekunjalo.  

“The article is yet another attempt to smear and undermine Sekunjalo, Independent Media and its chairman, Dr Iqbal Survé. The allegations, relying on innuendo and lacking any concrete evidence, are dismissed outright by Sekunjalo,” the statement said. 

“We categorically reject the baseless and preposterous claims made by News24 that Independent Media opinion writers are part of a ‘PR’ campaign for Sekunjalo or our chairman,” it continued. “Any suggestion that a chairman of a media conglomerate controls and runs the editorial process, as the article implies, is both laughable and without basis.”

Separate to this statement, Independent Media published a follow-up op-ed by Phiri that dismissed News24’s claim that he was not real.  

“This is an outright lie, and they back it up with no credible evidence. The claim by News24 is an attempt to reduce my opinion pieces to some PR-controlled efforts,” the op-ed ran.  

The op-ed again criticized News24 along racial lines, saying: “Deploying an army of journalists and cyber investigators to trace me, rather than engaging with the substance of my arguments, is a brute force intimidation tactic reminiscent of apartheid-era suppression of dissenting views.”

Women journalists targeted

Media analysts say the op-ed on Maughan reflects a wider trend of female journalists being harassed or discredited.

“It’s unacceptable that such abuse and disappointing piece should even be allowed to be published. Media owners are always discouraged to use their publications for such nefarious intentions,” Reggy Moalusi, director of the South African National Editors Forum, or SANEF, told VOA.  

The SANEF earlier this month noted that South Africa’s female journalists are often targets of bullying.  

In the op-ed on Maughan, the SANEF noted, “The piece went beyond a publication giving a platform to someone to air their views,” adding that the “accompanying picture/graphic on the article had a gun pointed at her image, which was a clear indication of its intention to incite violence against her.” 

The editor’s forum acknowledged the harassment female journalists confront, including cyberbullying.

Anton Harber, a former journalism professor at Johannesburg University of the Witwatersrand, says that women journalists in South Africa are more often targeted then their male counterparts.  

Such attacks, he said, are “harmful to journalism as a whole because we all know journalism is in a global credibility crisis.”

Speaking about the Survé case, Harber said the case shows “an absolute breakdown of the wall that’s supposed to exist, or the barriers that are meant to exist between owners, publishers, and journalism.”

Du Toit at News24 says the media group is waiting for the Press Council to respond to the complaint filed Monday. The council can forward complaints to an ombudsman who rules on the case and has power to request retractions or apologies.
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KINSHASA, Congo — Stanis Bujakera, a journalist detained since last September in Congo on charges of spreading false information, was released on Tuesday, his lawyer said.

The lawyer, Yana Ndikulu, said Bujakera — who works for international media including Reuters and Jeune Afrique — was released on Tuesday evening from the prison in the capital Kinshasa where he was being held.

“Our client is free,” Ndikulu said.

Bujakera told Reuters the director of the prison had told him he was free to leave shortly after 9:30 p.m. local time.

A court in Kinshasa on Monday had found Bujakera guilty of spreading false information, among other charges.

It sentenced him to six months in prison and fined him 1 million Congolese francs ($364). His legal team said after that ruling that Bujakera would be released on Tuesday because he had already served his sentence.

But the release was unexpectedly suspended after news emerged on Tuesday evening that the state prosecutor in the case had lodged an appeal against the sentence. About three hours later, however, Bujakera’s lawyers said the prosecutor had withdrawn his appeal, paving the way for his release.

Contacted by Reuters after the release, the prosecutor said he could not comment further.

Bujakera was arrested in September on suspicion of spreading false information about the killing of a prominent opposition politician in an article published by Jeune Afrique, the French news magazine has said.

The prosecutor in the case earlier this month had asked the court in Kinshasa to sentence Bujakera to 20 years in prison.

Local and international rights groups including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International had condemned Bujakera’s detention, calling it an attack on press freedom. Reuters had also called for his release.
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The migrant crisis in New York City, which began nearly two years ago with an influx of Venezuelans and other Latin Americans, has seen a tripling in the number of migrants from West African nations in the past year. Aron Ranen reports from New York City.
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Abuja, Nigeria — Nigeria’s military on Tuesday said troops have rescued 16 abductees in northwest Kaduna state after exchanging fire with insurgents who attacked a local community on Sunday night — one of two kidnap attacks in the area over the weekend.

According to a military statement posted on X, troops responded to a tip about the operation Sunday night of nonstate armed groups in the Tantatu community in Kajuru district.

The military said the attackers had taken several hostages before they arrived, exchanged fire with them and saved 16 of the abductees.

According to local media reports, 87 people, including women and children, went missing from the Sunday attack — barely 24 hours after gunmen captured 16 people from their homes in Dogon Noma, another community in Kajuru.

The army said troops are still searching the forests for missing people. The latest string of kidnappings in Nigeria in recent weeks is stoking fears of rising insecurity.

Security analyst Chidi Omeje says worsening economic problems and lack of governance in remote areas are to blame.

“These guys are becoming more audacious because they see the window of opportunity, and they’re just exploiting it,” Omeje said. “It’s very obvious that the response of the security government and security agencies are not effective enough to contain these infractions. But these are just the symptoms. The real issue here is the growing poverty and despondency in the people.”

The deterioration of security in Africa’s largest country comes amid a worsening economic crisis.

Kaduna state has been a hot spot of recent incidents. Just over a week ago, 287 school students were abducted in the state, and days later, another 61 residents were also kidnapped.

The latest incidents prompted authorities last week to order the establishment of a mobile police force base in the state.

But security analyst Kabir Adamu said what is needed the most is a change of strategy.

“There are gaps within the security architecture,” Adamu said. “The farther away you go from the city center, the bigger the gaps. It shows clearly that protection, especially in the rural areas, is almost nonexistent for the dwellers.”

Kaduna is home to many military training institutions and installations.

Omeje said authorities need to revise the deployment of police officers to where they’re needed the most. He said that there are many ungoverned areas while 60% of the nation’s police are devoted to VIP protection.

“Ten percent or so are in administration in the offices, then you’re left with about 30% doing the real policing work,” Omeje said. “We have to be intentional about going back to the normal internal security structure.”

President Bola Tinubu, who is implementing bold economic reforms, vowed last year to address insecurity if he was elected president.

On March 14, 16 soldiers, including high ranking officers, were killed and decapitated in southern Delta state. They were on a mission to quell conflict between two communities in the Bomadi region.

The Nigerian military has launched an investigation.
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Pentagon — The United States is not ruling out a continued military presence in Niger, despite a statement by the country’s ruling military junta that it was ending an agreement allowing for the presence of American forces engaged in counterterrorism missions.

U.S. defense officials said Monday the U.S. has yet to withdraw any of its approximately 1,000 military personnel from Niger and, along with officials from the White House and the State Department, said conversations with Nigerien officials are continuing.

“We remain in contact,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday, adding that Niger’s military junta has yet to share information on a possible deadline for U.S. forces to leave the country.

“We have different lines of communications at all levels of government with Niger and our government,” she said. “Again, we want to see our partnership continue if there is a pathway forward.”

At the State Department, deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said most of the talks, for now, have been centered through the U.S. Embassy.

“We continue to have our ambassador and our embassy team there, and we’re continuing to discuss with them [Nigerien officials],” he said.

“We believe our security partnerships in West Africa are mutually beneficial and they are intended [to] achieve, I should say, what we think to be shared goals of detecting, deterring and reducing terrorist violence,” Patel added.

A spokesperson for the ruling military junta announced Saturday that it had revoked, effective immediately, the status of forces agreement that allowed U.S. forces to operate in the country and cooperate with the Nigerien military against militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group.

Colonel Amadou Abdramane said the decision was based, in part, on what he called a “condescending attitude” by U.S. officials in a high-level delegation that met with Nigerien officials in the capital of Niamey last week.

“Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism,” he said.

U.S. officials, in contrast, described last week’s talks, as “direct and frank,” providing U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee, Assistant Secretary of Defense Celeste Wallander and U.S. Africa Command’s General Michael Langley a chance to express Washington’s concerns while also hearing from Nigerien military and civilian officials.

“We were troubled on the path that Niger is on,” the Pentagon’s Singh told reporters Monday, admitting that some of the concerns centered on Niger’s “potential relationships with Russia and Iran.”

Iran hosted Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine in January and voiced a willingness to help Niger cope with international sanctions levied following the July 2023 coup.

But Niger’s military junta bristled at what it said were “misleading allegations” by U.S. officials that Niger had struck a secret deal to provide Tehran with uranium.

The junta also defended its relationship with Moscow, saying Russia partners with Niger to provide its military with equipment needed in the country’s fight against various terrorist groups.

U.S. officials, though, have previously expressed concerns about Russian defense officials making visits to Niger following the July coup.

And a top U.S. lawmaker Monday, suggested Russian influence may have played a role in the military junta’s announcement.

“Part of this is Russia’s attempt to insinuate themselves in the region dramatically and to cause us [the U.S.] problems,” said Senator Jack Reed, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Reed, a Democrat, told a virtual meeting of the Washington-based Defense Writers Group that Niger’s ruling junta has been sending the U.S. signals for months that it might seek to evict U.S. forces.

“We will have to counter that … by repositioning forces and capabilities so we can still have observation and influence in that area of the Sahel,” Reed said, noting that U.S. military officials have been considering other options.

U.S. military officials confirmed last August, following the coup, that a search for alternative sites was underway. But the Pentagon refused to say Monday how much progress had been made.

There are also concerns about getting other allies or partners in the region to agree to host a significant U.S. presence, and whether the location can provide the same kind of quick and easy access to terrorist targets, like the U.S. bases in Niger.

Most U.S. forces in Niger are currently located at Air Base 201 in the Nigerien city of Agadez, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

The base, built about six years ago at a cost of $110 million, allowed the U.S. to conduct surveillance and counterterrorism missions with a fleet of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones.

But the U.S. suspended all counterterrorism missions from the base following the July 2023 coup, saying personnel have been limited to conducting operations only for the purpose of protecting U.S. forces.
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