Improvised explosive device kills eight gold miners in Niger

A bomb blast in insurgent-riven west Niger has killed at least eight workers at the Samira gold mine in the Tillaberi region, local sources told AFP on Tuesday.

Located in the borderlands straddling Niger and fellow unrest-hit Sahel neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso, the Tillaberi region is a hotbed for various militants.

The workers died on Friday after their vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device (IED), a militant weapon of choice for killing civilians and soldiers alike.

The vehicle was part of a convoy under military escort that was attempting to return to the capital Niamey, a resident of Farie, a village near where the blast happened, told AFP.

Rolled onto a mine

"Their minibus rolled onto a mine and blew up and that caused eight deaths. They were buried on Sunday," Amadou Arouna Maiga, coordinator of the "Tillaberi Union for Peace and Security" association, told a private broadcaster on Monday evening.

For its part the independent daily newspaper l'Enqueteur (The Inquirer) on Tuesday gave a toll of "more than 10 dead."

Since 2004 the village of Samira on the right bank of the River Niger has been home to the Societe des Mines du Liptako (SML), the country's only industrial gold mine.

The army has deployed more than 2,000 soldiers to fight the insurgent groups in the surrounding region, at the epicentre of the violence wracking the country.

Past incidents

Seven soldiers were killed near Samira in May 2023 after one of their escort and supply vehicles hit a landmine.

In June 2021 armed gunmen abducted two Chinese employees of a mining company in Mbanga, also in the Tillaberi region, before freeing them nine months later.

Since 2023 Niger has been ruled by a military junta that took power in a coup promising to crack down on the country's myriad security issues.

For his first outing outside Niamey, junta chief Abdourahamane Tchiani in February 2025 inspected the Samira gold mine's installations and paid a visit to the troops deployed in the region.

Besides the unrest in the west, Niger is also faced with violence from Boko Haram and its rival, ISWAP, in the southeast.