“Thanks to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger. We attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war against sharia.” Yet we’re constantly told by Islamic spokesmen in the U.S. that Sharia is benign and completely compatible with American Constitutional freedoms. How very odd that elsewhere it so often leads to violence.
More on this story. “Islamist bombers kill 20 in Niger attacks, seize hostages,” from AFP, May 23:
Islamist militants staged brazen twin car bomb attacks on an army base and a French-run uranium mine in Niger, killing at least 20 people and taking several trainee army officers hostage, the government said.
The unprecedented attacks were claimed by an Islamist group as revenge for Niger’s involvement in a French-led military offensive in neighbouring Mali and come just four months after Al-Qaeda linked militants seized a desert gas plant in neighbouring Algeria in a siege that left 38 hostages dead.
The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Islamist groups which seized control of northern Mali last year before being driven out by French-led troops, claimed the near simultaneous bombings at the Agadez army base and the French majority-owned uranium mine in Arlit.
Oneness — that is, tauhid, the Islamic concept of the absolute unity of Allah.
“Thanks to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger,” MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui told AFP.
“We attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war against sharia (Islamic law).”
Eighteen soldiers and a civilian were killed along with four attackers at the army base in Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger, while around 50 people were wounded at the mine, Interior Minister Abdou Labo said….