The attacks, which happened on Wednesday, struck in the Tillabéri region, near Burkina Faso and Mali, where jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaida and the Islamic State (IS) are active.

"There were numerous deaths among soldiers in two separate incidents yesterday in the Tillaberi area," a former local official told AFP.

The former official said "20 soldiers were killed by terrorists", while other sources gave a higher overall toll including soldiers and members of the national guard.

A group of west African journalists specialising in security news in the Sahel, Wamaps, attributed several of the attacks on Wednesday to a branch of IS.

It "launched multiple assaults, including an attack on a Nigerien army position near Tillaberi airport, causing the death of 12 soldiers" of the Nigerien Armed Forces, Wamaps said on X on Thursday.

Wamaps added that two more attacks struck in central Tillaberi in the Digga Banda neighbourhood near a school, killing at least two civilians.

Wamaps said 15 troops from the national guard were killed while responding to those attacks.

G25, a civil society coalition close to the country's former leadership that was ousted by a coup in 2023, condemned what it called "the terrorist attacks" in Tillaberi, blaming them on the regional branch of IS.

The coalition also said that 12 Nigerien army soldiers and 15 National Guard members were killed.

On Wednesday, the global NGO Human Rights Watch urged Nigerien authorities to do more to protect civilians in the Tillaberi region, targeted since March by a series of deadly IS attacks.

bur-bam/rlp/rmb

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