Burkina Faso's security forces said on Tuesday they had destroyed two jihadist bases in the north and east of the country and arrested two suspects near the border with the Ivory Coast.

A gendarmerie unit on Saturday "dismantled a terrorist base" near the eastern town of Tanwalbougou, the armed forces chief of staff said in a weekly bulletin.

In a separate operation in the north of the country, Burkinabe troops in the five-nation G5 Sahel force, supported by a company of soldiers from Niger, destroyed a terrorist base on Saturday in a drilling zone 40 kms from Oursi, it said. Eight motorbikes, phones and other equipment were seized.

Meanwhile, two "suspects" were picked up in a joint operation with Ivorian forces to secure the two countries' 550-kilometre (340-mile) border, it said.

The operation "considerably disrupted armed groups in the area," the statement said.

The arrests near Alidougou on Saturday were made not far from where around 10 Ivorian soldiers were killed in a jihadist attack on a frontier post on June 11.

Ivory Coast said Monday it had captured the leader of the raid and arrested a "very large" number of his subordinates.

That attack was carried out by the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), an organisation linked to Al-Qaeda, according to a source in Burkina Faso.

Security analysts have long worried that a jihadist revolt in the Sahel that began in Mali in 2012 is spreading towards coastal states on the Gulf of Guinea.

Burkina Faso has been the scene of jihadist attacks since 2015. The north and east of the country are the regions most affected by jihadist violence which has claimed nearly 1,000 lives and forced 860,000 people from their homes over the past five years.

Jihadist violence, often intertwined with inter-communal violence, resulted in 4,000 deaths in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in 2019, according to the UN.

Niger prosecutor urges probe into missing defence funds
Niamey (AFP) June 23, 2020 - Niger's state prosecutor on Tuesday reported evidence of fraud and other crimes in a military procurement scandal that had cost the poor West African state nearly 50 million euros, although the sum was less than half the amount initially feared.

The "accumulated shortfall for the state" from overbilling and non-delivery of military gear totalled more than 32.6 billion CFA francs (49.7 million euros/$55.1 million), state prosecutor Maman Sayabou Issa said, citing a "final audit" by the defence ministry.

The affair sparked an outcry when excerpts of a preliminary audit began appearing on social media, showing misappropriations totalling more than 76 billion CFA francs or 116 million euros between 2017 and 2019.

"The preliminary report contained contradictions that were incorporated in a definitive report dated April 3, 2020," the prosecutor's statement said.

The findings point to possible criminal activity, the statement said, citing evidence of fraud, use of false documents, "illicit enrichment" and procurement irregularities.

The scandal dates to late February when the government announced that an audit requested by President Mahammadou Issoufou revealed overbilling and non-delivery of orders to the army, which has been fighting a jihadist insurgency in the southeast and west of the country since 2015.

On March 15, protests descended into violence between demonstrators and security forces. At least three civil society figures remain in custody.

Niger ranks as the poorest country in the world, placed at 189th out of 189 nations in the UN's Human Development Index.

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Algeria weighs plan to allow army deployments abroad
Algiers (AFP) June 18, 2020
Could Algeria soon send troops from its army, the pillar of the regime, to join peace-keeping missions led by the United Nations or African Union? President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has urged a constitutional change that would allow deployments abroad, signalling a departure from a military doctrine that has barred interventions outside national borders. The proposal by a government under continued pressure from a pro-democracy movement has sparked concerns about ending a cherished tradition of non- ... read more