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NIAMEY, Niger — Niger’s interior ministry said it had ordered search teams to remain alert after prisoners escaped Thursday from the high-security Kutukale prison, where inmates included some Islamist militants.
The interior ministry statement did not say how many prisoners escaped from Kutukale, 50 kilometres northwest of the capital, Niamey, or how they managed to escape. Escape attempts at the prison were thwarted in 2016 and 2019.
The prison’s inmates include prisoners from the West African country’s conflicts with al-Qaeda and Islamic State-linked armed groups, as well as suspected Boko Haram insurgents.
The local government imposed a curfew on the town of Tillabery, which is in the same area as the prison, but gave no further details.
Niger and its neighbors in the central Sahel region are on the front lines of a battle to curb the jihadist threat, which has intensified since al-Qaeda-linked militants first overran parts of Mali in 2012.
The insurgency has killed thousands of people, displaced more than 3 million and plunged some of the world’s poorest countries into a severe humanitarian crisis.
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Reuters
Reuters is a news organization founded in 1851 and owned by Thomson Reuters, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. It is one of the world’s largest news agencies, providing financial news and international coverage in more than 16 languages to more than 1,000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters worldwide.
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