The UN said on Thursday around hundred schools have closed or suspended classes in Niger due to the threat from Islamist militants, in the latest warning over jihadist presence.
A UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report from Niamey said thirty-three schools suspended classes and eighteen closed in Niger’s southwest Tillaberi region due to “threats from non-state armed groups.”
Forty-four schools remain closed because too few students have returned.
Western African leaders last month held regional talks on the escalating attacks by Boko Haram jihadists in the Lake Chad area, bordering Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon where Boko Haram began a bloody insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria in 2009 but has since spread into neighbouring countries prompting a regional military response.