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This press release is confirmed, but the added comment is unconfirmed - from a blog of unknown reliability-
-Shimron
Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 9:41:59 AM by epow
For Immediate Release
April 30, 2008
The faith-based organization TEAM, located in the United States, announces that it has arranged for an aircraft operated by a medical non-governmental organization in Chad to fly to Bardai to receive Steve Godbold, who has been detained by rebel forces since October 10, 2007. TEAM also offers to allow a representative of the international media to accompany this flight to observe the process.
On April 28, 2008 the President of the MDJT, Mr. Choua Dazi, stated in an interview published by Liberté sans frontières and posted at dabio.net that Mr. Godbold is “free” and that the MDJT is seeking a means to facilitate his departure from the Tibesti region of Chad.
Mr. Godbold is a missionary with TEAM and has lived and worked in Chad for a number of years. On October 10, 2007 he was on a humanitarian mission, delivering equipment for water wells in the Tibesti when he was detained by MDJT forces in Zoumri. Mr. Godbold has been in the custody of the MDJT ever since.
1 posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 9:42:00 AM by epow
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Al Qaeda Running out of Money to fund African Islamic Jihadists?
It appears al Qaeda may be running out of Money....
-Shimron
Matt Levitt of the Washington Institute reports on Al Qaeda finances:
"What remains to be seen is whether the al-Qa`ida senior leadership’s lack of funds degrades the core group’s power to control activities and direct operations. Without the power of the purse, would local terrorist cells still need the al-Qa`ida core as much as that core would need these cells?
Part of what drew the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria into the al-Qa`ida fold, according to intelligence analysts, was the financial dividend of such a relationship. Should this trend continue, it could lead to the further degeneration of the al-Qa`ida core and the devolution of al-Qa`ida’s organized global insurgency into a more localized—and controllable—terrorist threat.
Toward that end, and in light of recent successes disrupting and deterring al-Qa`ida’s finances, constricting the terrorist operating environment—with an eye toward al-Qa`ida’s financial streams in particular—should remain a strategic priority."
The Rest of the report from The Washington Institute
-Shimron
Matt Levitt of the Washington Institute reports on Al Qaeda finances:
"What remains to be seen is whether the al-Qa`ida senior leadership’s lack of funds degrades the core group’s power to control activities and direct operations. Without the power of the purse, would local terrorist cells still need the al-Qa`ida core as much as that core would need these cells?
Part of what drew the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria into the al-Qa`ida fold, according to intelligence analysts, was the financial dividend of such a relationship. Should this trend continue, it could lead to the further degeneration of the al-Qa`ida core and the devolution of al-Qa`ida’s organized global insurgency into a more localized—and controllable—terrorist threat.
Toward that end, and in light of recent successes disrupting and deterring al-Qa`ida’s finances, constricting the terrorist operating environment—with an eye toward al-Qa`ida’s financial streams in particular—should remain a strategic priority."
The Rest of the report from The Washington Institute
Lucinda Ahukharie Threatens to Quit in West African Narco State
By Alberto Dabo
BISSAU, April 14 (Reuters) - The chief of Guinea-Bissau's anti-drugs police has threatened to quit after rival policemen shot a counternarcotics officer in a revenge killing that undermines the country's fight against cocaine cartels.
Judicial Police Director Lucinda Ahukharie offered her resignation after members of an elite rapid response police unit broke into her headquarters on Sunday and tortured and shot dead one of her officers, accused of killing one of their members.
The body of the slain anti-drugs officer was then dumped in the street outside the ramshackle judicial police offices in the capital of the tiny, cash-strapped West African state, which Colombian cartels have targeted for their drugs operations.
Using boats and planes, the cartels have been smuggling tonnes of cocaine from Latin America to Europe, setting up clandestine airstrips, embarcation points and storage depots on Guinea-Bissau's jagged coastline and in its jungle interior.
Police sources said Ahukharie had demanded a full investigation into Sunday's incident, saying her small, under-equipped anti-drugs force of nearly 80 officers could not carry out their job if their own security was under threat.
"What we're seeing is state authority relegated to the level of the streets. How can we work in these conditions?" a judicial police officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
Justice Minister Carmelita Pires promised a full inquiry and said the police killers of counternarcotics officer Liberato Neves had been identified and would be "severely punished".
The day before his own killing, Neves had shot dead a member of the Interior Ministry's
Angolan-trained rapid response police in a confused brawl involving several police officers. He was being held in his own HQ when he was dragged out and killed.
Several prisoners also escaped.
Pires refused to accept Ahukharie's resignation, saying she believed the judicial police chief would reconsider.
NEED FOR SECURITY REFORM
Out-gunned by the cocaine cartels, Guinea-Bissau's beleaguered and under-funded anti-drugs police say they lack computers, radios, vehicles and even petrol to act against the drug traffickers. They often have to ask to borrow cars.
To try to stop Guinea-Bissau turning into a "narco-state", the United Nations and western governments have backed Ahukharie's judicial police in their unequal fight against the cartels, helping them to make some seizures and arrests.
The Rest @ Reuters Africa
BISSAU, April 14 (Reuters) - The chief of Guinea-Bissau's anti-drugs police has threatened to quit after rival policemen shot a counternarcotics officer in a revenge killing that undermines the country's fight against cocaine cartels.
Judicial Police Director Lucinda Ahukharie offered her resignation after members of an elite rapid response police unit broke into her headquarters on Sunday and tortured and shot dead one of her officers, accused of killing one of their members.
The body of the slain anti-drugs officer was then dumped in the street outside the ramshackle judicial police offices in the capital of the tiny, cash-strapped West African state, which Colombian cartels have targeted for their drugs operations.
Using boats and planes, the cartels have been smuggling tonnes of cocaine from Latin America to Europe, setting up clandestine airstrips, embarcation points and storage depots on Guinea-Bissau's jagged coastline and in its jungle interior.
Police sources said Ahukharie had demanded a full investigation into Sunday's incident, saying her small, under-equipped anti-drugs force of nearly 80 officers could not carry out their job if their own security was under threat.
"What we're seeing is state authority relegated to the level of the streets. How can we work in these conditions?" a judicial police officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
Justice Minister Carmelita Pires promised a full inquiry and said the police killers of counternarcotics officer Liberato Neves had been identified and would be "severely punished".
The day before his own killing, Neves had shot dead a member of the Interior Ministry's
Angolan-trained rapid response police in a confused brawl involving several police officers. He was being held in his own HQ when he was dragged out and killed.
Several prisoners also escaped.
Pires refused to accept Ahukharie's resignation, saying she believed the judicial police chief would reconsider.
NEED FOR SECURITY REFORM
Out-gunned by the cocaine cartels, Guinea-Bissau's beleaguered and under-funded anti-drugs police say they lack computers, radios, vehicles and even petrol to act against the drug traffickers. They often have to ask to borrow cars.
To try to stop Guinea-Bissau turning into a "narco-state", the United Nations and western governments have backed Ahukharie's judicial police in their unequal fight against the cartels, helping them to make some seizures and arrests.
The Rest @ Reuters Africa
Adan Hashi Ayro Dead
NAIROBI, Kenya — Aden Hashi Ayro, one of Al Qaeda’s top agents in East Africa and the leader of the Islamist comeback in Somalia, was killed Thursday morning by an American airstrike, according to Somali officials. (NY Times)
(APA-Mogadishu Somalia) A United States missile hit a house in central Somalia before dawn on Thursday morning, killing nine people including a top leader of the Alshabab Islamic Movement, Aden Hashi Ayro and his brother.
Witnesses said six other people were wounded in the attack.
More (APA-News)
(NYT)
Mr. Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia, a short, wispy man believed to be in his 30s who had gone from lowly car washer to top terrorist suspect blamed for a string of atrocities, including ripping up an Italian graveyard, killing a female BBC journalist and planning suicide attacks all across Somalia.
He was a military commander for the Shebab, an Islamist militia which the American government recently classified as a terrorist group.
Somalia officials said his death could be a key turning point in defeating the Islamists, who have seized several towns in recent weeks, and in bringing peace to the country.
“This will definitely weaken the Shebab,” said Mohamed Aden, consul for Somalia’s embassy in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya, who confirmed the developments. “This will help with reconciliation. You can’t imagine how many Somalis are saying yes, this is the one. The reaction is so good.”
Human rights organizations have upbraided the American government for launching air strikes against terrorist suspects inside Somalia and killing civilians instead, which has happened several times in the past year. But this time the missiles seemed to find their mark.
Around 3 a.m. Thursday morning, four missiles slammed into a home in the central Somalia town of Dhusamareb, according to residents, Somali officials and a spokesman for the Shebab.
The home was being used by Mr. Ayro and his top lieutenants as a hideout, Somali officials said. More than 10 people were killed, including Mr. Ayro, Mr. Ayro’s brother and several other high-ranking Shebab commanders.
“Infidel planes bombed Dhusamareb," Shabab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters. "Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed."
Dhusamareb, a town of about 100,000 people along one of the few highways in Somalia, is a stronghold of the Ayr clan, which Mr. Ayro belongs to. In the past few weeks, residents said, Islamist fighters had moved into the town, part of their strategy to wrest back control from the Transitional Federal Government, which is officially in charge of Somalia but wields little power on the ground.
In 2006, Mr. Ayro was part of the Islamist movement that briefly ruled Somalia. That ended in December 2006 when Ethiopian troops, backed up by American intelligence and air power, ousted the Islamists.
Since then, American forces have launched several airstrikes inside Somalia, including one in January 2007 which was thought to have wounded Mr. Ayro.
American officials were not able to be reached for comment immediately on Thursday morning but the description of the attack on Dhusamareb by residents, Somali officials and the spokesman for the Shebab fit the pattern of previous airstrikes. In the past attacks, cruise missiles were often used, launched from American war ships in the Indian Ocean.
American officials have said they have been given permission by Somalia’s government to attack terrorist suspects on Somali soil. American officials have accused Mr. Ayro of protecting wanted Qaeda members, including some of the men thought to have planned the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Mr. Ayro’s life story is a bit sketchy. According to Somali intelligence agents, he dropped out of school at a young age to wash cars and join one of the street-gang type militias that was fighting for control of Somalia in the early 1990s after the central government collapsed.
He became friends with a leader of his clan, Hassan Dahir Aweys, who arranged for him to go to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against American forces in 2001. He then returned to Mogadishu and trained fellow fighters in explosives, according to the International Crisis Group, a think-tank that specializes in conflict.
In 2005, Mr. Ayro desecrated the graves of dozens of Italians who had been buried in Mogadishu decades ago, when Somalia was an Italian colony. Mr. Ayro was essentially disowned by his clan after that. But his militant activities only increased, and in February 2005 he was blamed for gunning down a BBC news producer outside her hotel in Mogadishu.
Mr. Ayro had recently gone to Dhusamareb with a band of his fighters to help set up a local administration. But clan elders rejected him, said Mohammed Uluso, a leader of the Ayr clan, because the elders “didn’t want to mix up their legitimate goals with something suspicious.”
That might have been part of Mr. Ayro’s undoing, because Somali officials said that people in Dhusamareb provided American forces with up-to-the-minute intelligence on Mr. Ayro’s movements.
Mr. Uluso said Mr. Ayro was small and thin and looked like “a high school student, not this big guy the Americans were after.”
Mr. Uluso said he thinks the Shebab will continue even after Mr. Ayro’s death because many young Somalis see the Shebab as a “heroic cause” in terms of standing up to the Americans. (Shebab is the Arabic word for youth.)
“The Shebab won’t just disappear,” Mr. Uluso said. “But now that the hunt for Ayro is over, at least people will get their freedom back. So many people were hurt and oppressed in the effort to get him.”
The Rest @ the New Yor Times
(APA-Mogadishu Somalia) A United States missile hit a house in central Somalia before dawn on Thursday morning, killing nine people including a top leader of the Alshabab Islamic Movement, Aden Hashi Ayro and his brother.
Witnesses said six other people were wounded in the attack.
More (APA-News)
(NYT)
Mr. Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia, a short, wispy man believed to be in his 30s who had gone from lowly car washer to top terrorist suspect blamed for a string of atrocities, including ripping up an Italian graveyard, killing a female BBC journalist and planning suicide attacks all across Somalia.
He was a military commander for the Shebab, an Islamist militia which the American government recently classified as a terrorist group.
Somalia officials said his death could be a key turning point in defeating the Islamists, who have seized several towns in recent weeks, and in bringing peace to the country.
“This will definitely weaken the Shebab,” said Mohamed Aden, consul for Somalia’s embassy in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya, who confirmed the developments. “This will help with reconciliation. You can’t imagine how many Somalis are saying yes, this is the one. The reaction is so good.”
Human rights organizations have upbraided the American government for launching air strikes against terrorist suspects inside Somalia and killing civilians instead, which has happened several times in the past year. But this time the missiles seemed to find their mark.
Around 3 a.m. Thursday morning, four missiles slammed into a home in the central Somalia town of Dhusamareb, according to residents, Somali officials and a spokesman for the Shebab.
The home was being used by Mr. Ayro and his top lieutenants as a hideout, Somali officials said. More than 10 people were killed, including Mr. Ayro, Mr. Ayro’s brother and several other high-ranking Shebab commanders.
“Infidel planes bombed Dhusamareb," Shabab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told Reuters. "Two of our important people, including Ayro, were killed."
Dhusamareb, a town of about 100,000 people along one of the few highways in Somalia, is a stronghold of the Ayr clan, which Mr. Ayro belongs to. In the past few weeks, residents said, Islamist fighters had moved into the town, part of their strategy to wrest back control from the Transitional Federal Government, which is officially in charge of Somalia but wields little power on the ground.
In 2006, Mr. Ayro was part of the Islamist movement that briefly ruled Somalia. That ended in December 2006 when Ethiopian troops, backed up by American intelligence and air power, ousted the Islamists.
Since then, American forces have launched several airstrikes inside Somalia, including one in January 2007 which was thought to have wounded Mr. Ayro.
American officials were not able to be reached for comment immediately on Thursday morning but the description of the attack on Dhusamareb by residents, Somali officials and the spokesman for the Shebab fit the pattern of previous airstrikes. In the past attacks, cruise missiles were often used, launched from American war ships in the Indian Ocean.
American officials have said they have been given permission by Somalia’s government to attack terrorist suspects on Somali soil. American officials have accused Mr. Ayro of protecting wanted Qaeda members, including some of the men thought to have planned the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Mr. Ayro’s life story is a bit sketchy. According to Somali intelligence agents, he dropped out of school at a young age to wash cars and join one of the street-gang type militias that was fighting for control of Somalia in the early 1990s after the central government collapsed.
He became friends with a leader of his clan, Hassan Dahir Aweys, who arranged for him to go to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against American forces in 2001. He then returned to Mogadishu and trained fellow fighters in explosives, according to the International Crisis Group, a think-tank that specializes in conflict.
In 2005, Mr. Ayro desecrated the graves of dozens of Italians who had been buried in Mogadishu decades ago, when Somalia was an Italian colony. Mr. Ayro was essentially disowned by his clan after that. But his militant activities only increased, and in February 2005 he was blamed for gunning down a BBC news producer outside her hotel in Mogadishu.
Mr. Ayro had recently gone to Dhusamareb with a band of his fighters to help set up a local administration. But clan elders rejected him, said Mohammed Uluso, a leader of the Ayr clan, because the elders “didn’t want to mix up their legitimate goals with something suspicious.”
That might have been part of Mr. Ayro’s undoing, because Somali officials said that people in Dhusamareb provided American forces with up-to-the-minute intelligence on Mr. Ayro’s movements.
Mr. Uluso said Mr. Ayro was small and thin and looked like “a high school student, not this big guy the Americans were after.”
Mr. Uluso said he thinks the Shebab will continue even after Mr. Ayro’s death because many young Somalis see the Shebab as a “heroic cause” in terms of standing up to the Americans. (Shebab is the Arabic word for youth.)
“The Shebab won’t just disappear,” Mr. Uluso said. “But now that the hunt for Ayro is over, at least people will get their freedom back. So many people were hurt and oppressed in the effort to get him.”
The Rest @ the New Yor Times
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Robow, the Teacher Killer and Economic Expert
An Islamist guerrilla group in Somalia is responsible for the brutal slaying of four school instructors after fighters briefly seized a key town without bloodshed.
A spokesman for al Shabaab fighters, Muktar Robow "Abu Mansur," did not distance his armed group from killing the four civilians in Beletwein, a provincial capital near the Ethiopian border.
"Our fighters did not intentionally kill the teachers," Abu Mansur told the AP.
Al Shabaab guerrillas captured Beletwein after Hiran Governor Yusuf Daboged and regional security forces withdrew from the town Sunday night, locals said.
The governor was last reported to have safely reached the border village of Feer Feer, a key base for Ethiopian troops deployed in Somalia's central regions.
In Beletwein, the Islamist guerrillas seized control of all government buildings and burned the home of Governor Daboged, before withdrawing voluntarily.
The four teachers - two Kenyans and two British citizens of Somali origin - were killed outside of a private, English-language school.
But the al Shabaab spokesman was eager to distance his militant group from flyers spread throughout markets in the capital Mogadishu, threatening traders to lower the exchange rate or face death.
Abu Mansur said that al Shabaab is not responsible for those flyers, adding: "Soon, we will take steps against those groups [who spread the flyers]," he told Mogadishu-based radio stations Monday.
He blamed the governments of Somalia and Ethiopia for hyperinflation, which has severely devalued the Somali Shilling and contributed to rising market prices for common goods.
According to Abu Mansur, the Ethiopian government wants to eradicate the Somali Shilling and replace the country's currency with the Ethiopian birr.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804150114.html
A spokesman for al Shabaab fighters, Muktar Robow "Abu Mansur," did not distance his armed group from killing the four civilians in Beletwein, a provincial capital near the Ethiopian border.
"Our fighters did not intentionally kill the teachers," Abu Mansur told the AP.
Al Shabaab guerrillas captured Beletwein after Hiran Governor Yusuf Daboged and regional security forces withdrew from the town Sunday night, locals said.
The governor was last reported to have safely reached the border village of Feer Feer, a key base for Ethiopian troops deployed in Somalia's central regions.
In Beletwein, the Islamist guerrillas seized control of all government buildings and burned the home of Governor Daboged, before withdrawing voluntarily.
The four teachers - two Kenyans and two British citizens of Somali origin - were killed outside of a private, English-language school.
But the al Shabaab spokesman was eager to distance his militant group from flyers spread throughout markets in the capital Mogadishu, threatening traders to lower the exchange rate or face death.
Abu Mansur said that al Shabaab is not responsible for those flyers, adding: "Soon, we will take steps against those groups [who spread the flyers]," he told Mogadishu-based radio stations Monday.
He blamed the governments of Somalia and Ethiopia for hyperinflation, which has severely devalued the Somali Shilling and contributed to rising market prices for common goods.
According to Abu Mansur, the Ethiopian government wants to eradicate the Somali Shilling and replace the country's currency with the Ethiopian birr.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804150114.html
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Mali Army Officers (Tuaregs) are Executed When Eent to Negotiate Austrians' Release
This article appeared April 22, 2008, and I did not catch it until now.
However, therre are some Key names,dates, and events in the Mali Tuareg rebellion.
-Shimron
BRIEFSMYSTERIOUS MURDERS OF TUAREGS NEGOTIATING WITH AL-QAEDA KIDNAPPERS IN MALIThe bodies of three brutally executed men were found in the desert region of Kidal in northern Mali last week.
The victims turned out to be two Tuareg negotiators and a driver, assigned to mediate the release of two Austrian tourists, Wolfgang Ebner and Andrea Kloiber, who were kidnapped in February by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) while on an “adventure holiday” in Tunisia. The kidnappers are believed to be under the command of AQIM leader Abdel Hamid Abu Zayd, thought to be the Saharan amir of AQIM, Yahia Abu Amar, selected the mediators and made arrangements for the meeting.
Full Article from Jamestown
However, therre are some Key names,dates, and events in the Mali Tuareg rebellion.
-Shimron
BRIEFSMYSTERIOUS MURDERS OF TUAREGS NEGOTIATING WITH AL-QAEDA KIDNAPPERS IN MALIThe bodies of three brutally executed men were found in the desert region of Kidal in northern Mali last week.
The victims turned out to be two Tuareg negotiators and a driver, assigned to mediate the release of two Austrian tourists, Wolfgang Ebner and Andrea Kloiber, who were kidnapped in February by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) while on an “adventure holiday” in Tunisia. The kidnappers are believed to be under the command of AQIM leader Abdel Hamid Abu Zayd, thought to be the Saharan amir of AQIM, Yahia Abu Amar, selected the mediators and made arrangements for the meeting.
- In exchange for the Austrians, AQIM is demanding a ransom and the release of an Islamist and his wife that the group claims are being held and tortured in “the Austrian Guantanamo” (AFP, April 7).
- The murders of two of the six mediators appointed to negotiate the release of the two Austrians came only several days after negotiation efforts began (Al-Jazeera, April 16).
- The mediators were former rebel Tuareg commanders who were recently integrated into the Malian army as part of a peace deal struck last year.
- A student who was acting as a driver for mediator Baraka Cheikh was also killed after apparently being mistaken for Colonel Muhammad Ould Midou, another Tuareg officer (El Khabar [Algiers], April 20).
- On arrival at a tent sent up for the purpose of negotiations, the men were tied up and repeatedly shot in the head. The military commander of the Malian Tuareg rebels is Lt. Col. Hassan Fagaga, who has twice been integrated into the Malian army but has returned to the desert rebellion both times. Fagaga is now reported to be in league with rebel leader Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, who held out from last year’s accord with the government (Reuters, April 8).
- In March Fagaga threatened to “eliminate” any al-Qaeda operatives who ventured into the area controlled by the Tuareg rebels, though he acknowledged that some AQIM members had infiltrated the area around Kidal, close to the Algerian border and the scene of heavy fighting between the rebels and the Malian army last month (El Khabar, March 5).
Though there is little evidence so far as to who is responsible for this crime, some Tuareg suspect intelligence agents connected to the Malian Army of carrying out the murders. Referring to continuing ethnic tensions within Mali, Hassan Fagaga claims: “There is a plan to execute the commanders in the Malian army of Tuareg origin in the north…” (El Khabar, April 17). After the announcement of an unofficial truce earlier this month between Tuareg rebels and the Malian army, the heavy fighting seen in March has slackened off, though both sides remain on a war footing. The Tuareg rebels have their own hostages: 33 Malian soldiers who were captured last month but not released as they were supposed to be under the terms of the latest ceasefire.
- Negotiations for the release of the Austrians appear to have been suspended, though the Austrian Foreign Ministry asserts that efforts are continuing to obtain the release of the pair.
- Libya has also become involved in the negotiations at the highest levels, but three deadlines set by AQIM have already expired.
- Austria has denied sending its “Cobra” Special Forces team (Einsatzkommando Cobra, or EKO) to Mali to retrieve the hostages (El Khabar, March 26).
Full Article from Jamestown
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
FARS Joins MNJ in Niger Rebellion
By Abdoulaye Massalatchi
NIAMEY, April 8 (Reuters) -
Toubou tribesmen in the extreme southeast of Niger said on Monday they had killed seven soldiers, appearing to open up a new front in a growing conflict between Saharan nomads and the government.
The Toubou-led Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Sahara (FARS) said it had also captured six more soldiers in fighting over the weekend in the region of Diffa, 1,400 km (870 miles) southeast of the capital Niamey.
Niger's army confirmed the clashes but said only two people had been killed, one on each side.
FARS said last week it was joining forces with the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ),
a Tuareg-led insurgency which has killed at least 70 government soldiers since February last year in a campaign for greater economic and political autonomy.
NIAMEY, April 8 (Reuters) -
Toubou tribesmen in the extreme southeast of Niger said on Monday they had killed seven soldiers, appearing to open up a new front in a growing conflict between Saharan nomads and the government.
The Toubou-led Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Sahara (FARS) said it had also captured six more soldiers in fighting over the weekend in the region of Diffa, 1,400 km (870 miles) southeast of the capital Niamey.
Niger's army confirmed the clashes but said only two people had been killed, one on each side.
FARS said last week it was joining forces with the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ),
a Tuareg-led insurgency which has killed at least 70 government soldiers since February last year in a campaign for greater economic and political autonomy.
- "The justice and good governance that we want for our country, we want for all people in Niger, be they in the south or north, the east or west," FARS President Bocar Mohamed Sougouma said on the MNJ Web site.
Numerous light-skinned ethnic Tuareg, Arab and Toubou groups in Niger's northern and eastern deserts staged a joint uprising in the 1990s to demand greater independence from the country's black African-dominated government.Some Tuareg groups accepted a 1995 peace deal but the Toubou FARS held out until 1997, when they were granted an amnesty.
Former fighters have since accused the Niger government of failing to respect those accords.
Frustrations have boiled over again as the government encourages more foreign mining companies to invest in the northern Agadez province, home to one of the world's richest reserves of uranium.
Some nomads who feel economically marginalised despite the 1990s peace deals, which were meant to better integrate them, say only the government more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away in Niamey is benefiting from the investment.
Niger's government does not recognise the MNJ, dismissing the group as common bandits and drug traffickers and has so far refused to negotiate with them.
The region around Agadez has been awash with arms since the end of the 1990s rebellion and is criss-crossed with smuggling routes carrying everything from
- fake cigarettes
- small arms
- migrants
often with the complicity of the security forces.A senior police commissioner and Interior Ministry official in Niamey, Abdoulaye Amadou, was detained this week and is being investigated for links to the rebellion, said the rebels and another senior police officer
"Information has been established that he had contacts with armed bandits, without any official authorisation, and we have to clear all that up," the officer said, asking not to be named.
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