{"id":54894,"date":"2019-12-16T10:31:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T02:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=54894"},"modified":"2019-12-16T10:31:04","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T02:31:04","slug":"west-african-leaders-meet-over-niger-army-base-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=54894","title":{"rendered":"West African leaders meet over Niger Army Base attack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.brudirect.com\/images\/news\/20191216_africa.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou received the bodies of the dead soldiers on Friday<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u00a0NIAMEY, Dec 16\u00a0(NNN-AGENCIES)\u00a0&#8212;<\/strong>Leaders from west African countries fighting the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel have held a short prayer service in Niger beside the graves of 71 soldiers who were killed last week during an attack on a military camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were buried on Friday inside a military base close to the capital Niamey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Daesh group said it carried out the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A regional force, helped by French troops, is battling the jihadists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week&#8217;s attack in Niger&#8217;s western town of In Ates was described as the deadliest raid against the Nigerien military in living memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The presidents of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Chad will be holding a crisis meeting amidst the deteriorating security situation after the deaths of more than 230 soldiers over the last four months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 71 soldiers killed in In Ates were part of the G5 Sahel regional force, which is supported by 4,500 French troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The five-nation counter insurgency force was launched four years ago when almost all the attacks by the militants were in Mali.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But since then the area affected by the violence has grown significantly and spread to neighbouring countries. That&#8217;s partly because the regional force is under equipped and many of the soldiers are poorly trained. &#8212; NNN-AGENCIES<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou received the bodies of the dead soldiers on Friday \u00a0NIAMEY, Dec 16\u00a0(NNN-AGENCIES)\u00a0&#8212;Leaders from west African countries fighting the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel have held a short prayer service in Niger beside the graves of 71 soldiers who were killed last week during an attack on a military camp. They were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54894"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}