Niger soldiers patrol near Agadez on September 24, 2010. By Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)
NIAMEY (AFP) - Twin car bombings at an army base and a French-run uranium mine in northern Niger killed at least 10 people Thursday, in unprecedented attacks claimed by an Islamist group fighting French-led troops in neighbouring Mali.The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) claimed the bombings, calling them punishment for Niger's participation in a French-led military offensive against Islamist extremists who had seized control of northern Mali last year and ruled it under a brutal version of Islamic law for some 10 months."Thanks to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger," MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui told AFP."We attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war against sharia (Islamic law)."The attacks are the first of their kind in Niger, an impoverished west African country that has sent troops into neighbouring Mali as part of a regional force supporting the French-led operation.They come some four months after Al-Qaeda-linked militants seized a desert gas plant in a brazen raid in neighbouring Algeria that left 38 hostages dead, including 37 foreigners, in what the Islamists called a retaliatory attack for France's action in Mali.French nuclear giant Areva said 13 people had been wounded at its Somair subsidiary, while a Western source said the two blasts had killed at least 10 people.In the first attack, a car exploded outside the army base in Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger. ...
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