Two attacks on "defenseless civilian populations" along Niger's border with Burkina Faso left some 40 dead between Dec. 12 and 14, authorities said. Niamey's defense ministry said 21 were killed in Libiri village and 18 in Kokorou, both in Tillabéri region. The statement blamed "criminals," but the borderlands are a stronghold of jihadist insurgents. An even worse attack was reported days earlier, but is being denied by Niger's ruling junta. Authorities suspended the operations of the BBC in Niger after it reported that jihadists had killed 90 soldiers and upwards of 40 civilians at Chatoumane, also in Tillabéri. According to the monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), at least 1,500 soldiers and civilians have been killed in jihadist attacks in Niger in the past year—more than double the 650 killed from July 2022 to July 2023. (AFP, France24, RFI, BBC News, TRT World)

President Mahamat Déby has vowed vengeance for an attack by jihadists on an army base in Chad's Lake region that killed at least 40 soldiers Oct. 27. The insurgents who managed to overrun the base are likely to be from Boko Haram's "Bakura" faction, which is concentrated in the northern part of the region, on the Niger-Chad border. They've been involved in a long-running battle for supremacy in the region with the rival Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). Their commander, Ibrahim Bakura Doro, has resisted both peace overtures and demands for assimilation by the larger ISWAP group. The night-time attack on the Barkaram base, in which weapons and equipment were captured, follows a military sweep through the region earlier in the year by a joint force of Nigerian, Cameroonian and Chadian troops—which at the time was proclaimed a success.

Typhoons, storms and flooding have killed hundreds and left millions homeless across four continents in recent days. More than 600 people—mostly in Vietnam and Myanmar—died when Super Typhoon Yagi, one of the strongest typhoons to hit Southeast Asia in decades, tore through the region, triggering landslides. In China, Typhoon Bebinca battered the commercial capital, Shanghai, forcing more than 400,000 people to evacuate. In Europe, at least 23 people died when Storm Boris dumped five times September's average rainfall in a single week. In the United States, parts of North and South Carolina recorded 45 centimeters of rain in 12 hours—a statistic so rare it's considered a once-in-a-thousand-year event. Inevitably, the wild weather has been devastating for more vulnerable countries. In conflict-affected northeastern Nigeria, half of the city of Maiduguri is under water after a local dam overflowed following torrential rains; recently emptied displacement camps are being used to shelter the homeless. In neighboring Chad, meanwhile, flooding has killed more than 340 people in the country's south.

The al-Qaeda-linked JNIM group on Sept. 17 carried out a major attack in Mali's capital, Bamako, with reports suggesting that up to 70 people were killed and hundreds more wounded. Jihadist fighters attacked the city's airport—damaging a plane used by the World Food Program—and stormed a military police school. JNIM only makes rare forays into Bamako, and may be sending a message to the ruling junta that it remains a potent force despite operations launched against it. (TNH)

Russia is withdrawing 100 of its paramilitary troops from Burkina Faso to assist in the war with Ukraine, reports indicate. The troops are part of a contingent of some 300 fighters from the Medvedi or Bear Brigade—one of the Russian private military companies operating in West Africa—who arrived in Burkina Faso in May to support the country's ruling military junta. In a statement, the group said its forces would return home to support Russia's defense of Kursk oblast against Ukraine's recent cross-border offensive. There are fears the pull-out could embolden jihadist insurgents in Burkina Faso, who recently killed up to 300 people in one of the biggest attacks in years. (BBC News, Kyiv Post)

Mali announced Aug. 5 that it has cut diplomatic relations with Ukraine, after a Kyiv military official boasted of having aided an insurgent attack in the country's north that left scores of government troops and Russian mercenaries dead a week earlier. Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency, said on social media that "the rebels received necessary information, and not just information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals." While not saying whether Ukrainian military personnel were involved in the fighting or were present in the country, Yusov cryptically added that the GUR "won't discuss the details at the moment, but there will be more to come." Malian official Col. Abdoulaye Maiga said Yusov's comments "admitted Ukraine's involvement in a cowardly, treacherous and barbaric attack by armed terrorist groups."

A commander of Russia's paramilitary Africa Corps was killed along with some 50 of his fighters in an insurgent ambush amid a sandstorm in northern Mali on July 27. The attack, in Tinzaouatène district along the Algerian border northeast of the desert city of Kidal, is said to be the biggest loss ever for Russian forces in Africa. However, it is unclear who carried it out, as two mutually hostile groups have claimed responsibility. "Our forces decisively obliterated these enemy columns," said a statement by Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, spokesman for the Permanent Strategic Cadre for Peace, Security & Development (CSP-PSD), an alliance of Tuareg rebel groups fighting for independence in Mali's north, formery known as the Coordinating Body of Azawad Movements (CMA). But a separate statement by Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, also claimed sole responsibility for the attack. The Malian regime and Russian mercenaries have been fighting both groups in the region. (CNN, BBC News, FDD, Al Jazeera)

Amnesty International urged Malian authorities to immediately release dissident Youssouf Daba Diawara and 11 other arbitrarily detained opposition politicians in a July 19 statement. According to the statement, Mali's junta has been arbitrarily holding these political figures solely for exercising their civil rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Diawara was coordinator of the Association of Movements, Friends & Supporters of Imam Mahmud Dicko (CMAS) until it was dissolved by the authorities in March. On July 12, armed men forced him out of his car in Bamako and took him to the Gendarmerie's Criminal Investigations Brigade. He was charged with "opposition to legitimate authority" for participating in a protest against power cuts and inflation in June. His trial is scheduled for October.