Boko Haram attacks force 150 schools to shut in Niger – US sends troops to help anti-terror operations

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NIAMEY, Nov 7, (Agencies): Some 150 schools with more than 12,000 pupils have been forced to close due to the deadly attacks in Niger’s southeast Diffa region, the United Nations said Friday. Most of the affected schools are near Lake Chad and on the banks of the Yobe River, which marks the border between Niger and Nigeria, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.

The agency said 151 schools with a total of 12,631 pupils had closed due to “insecurity that has sparked the absence of teachers and panic in the population”. “The pupils are now at camps for displaced people,” the agency said, adding that there are no schools at the camps. Citing a source in Niger’s government, OCHA also said that 47,000 of Diffa’s 500,000 residents had been forced to flee their homes since February, when Boko Haram launched a string of deadly attacks. Numerous local schools closed following Boko Haram’s first attacks in the country in February, with more following suit following a recent surge in assaults by the Nigeria-based Islamist group, a local official told AFP.

Thirteen people were killed and three injured in an attack on the Diffa village of Ala last week, local officials said. Niger’s government has been working with the UN and other partners on a plan intended to allow children to go back to their studies in safer locations by the end of November. Meanwhile, the United States has sent more than 30 troops to central Niger to help train local forces to fight Islamist militants, state TV and security sources said on Friday.

Niger is in the middle of a desert corridor between Mali’s lawless north and Libya’s barren south used by Islamist militants, including some with ties to al-Qaeda. State television said that US ambassador Eunice Reddick had visited the troops earlier on Friday at the base in Agadez, a gateway city to the desert north. “Training began in mid-October in Agadez with more than 30 American instructors who will train more than 100 of our soldiers,” said a Niger military source.

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