Attackers targeting a military barracks in Niger have detonated two car bombs, injuring more than 12 people, according to a French company operating in the affected area. Areva said on Thursday that one bomb went off in Arlit, where it operates a uranium mine, and another exploded in the city of Agadez, where a military barracks was the target. The casualties, all employees of Areva, were in Arlit, which is in the northern part of Niger where armed fighters have carried out attacks, the company said in a statement. Witnesses said the vehicle carrying the explosives in Agadez blew up in front of a military barracks. “We heard a strong detonation that woke the whole neighborhood, it was so powerful,” Abdoulaye Harouna, a resident of Agadez, said. “The whole town is now surrounded by soldiers looking for the attackers.” In 2010, an al-Qaeda offshoot kidnapped seven foreigners, including five French nationals, from a residential compound near Arlit. No group immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack, but because Niger shares a border with the troubled nation of Mali, whose north was occupied for nearly a year by a trio of al-Qaeda-linked groups, residents and government officials assume that the attackers are fighters.
