Niamey

A Tuareg rebel group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of two Canadians, including a top UN envoy, who disappeared in Niger.

Tuareg-led rebels in Niger said late on Tuesday they had killed 15 government soldiers in a clash at Gougaram in the West African country’s remote Saharan north, where uranium is mined. The rebel group said a large convoy of military vehicles had advanced towards the town of Iferouane on Monday, prompting Tuesday’s clash.

Niger’s ruling party has backed growing demands for peace talks with Saharan rebels, piling pressure on President Mamadou Tandja to sit down with the authors of a bloody five-month-old uprising. The Niger Movement for Justice has attacked government and mining interests in Niger’s mineral-rich north.

Several thousand people demonstrated peacefully in Niger’s capital on Thursday in a new protest called by a coalition of civic rights groups against the cost of key services in the country. After a rally outside the Parliament, the protestors marched to Nelson Mandela Square, near the presidency, where they handed a petition to two aides of President Mamadou Tandja.

Heads of state and government of eight French-speaking west African countries met in Niamey, Niger on Monday to discuss an emergency plan to combat lethal bird flu and choose a new head for the central bank of west African states. The summit opened with grim statistics on the danger that could face the region’s poultry if the H5N1 virus, which first hit the region in February, is not contained.

Two weeks after bird flu was confirmed in Niger, authorities have received only limited assistance to tackle the deadly H5N1 virus. The government of Niger launched an appeal for assistance the day after bird flu was confirmed in Niger at the end of February. First off the mark with help was neighbouring Nigeria.

The United Nations said on Monday that food distribution targeting Niger’s most vulnerable populations will continue beyond the harvests hoped to return food security to the impoverished West African state. The announcement came amid bubbling controversy over further food distribution beyond harvest time.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived on Tuesday in Niger to ”see for myself” the impact of a devastating famine in the largely desert West African country after the United Nations was accused of bungling aid action. He said he would discuss with Prime Minister Hama Amadou measures to deal with the massive crisis gripping one of the world’s poorest nations.

Niger’s president played down the food crisis ravaging his desert nation, saying that people in the impoverished West African country ”look well-fed”. TV networks have for weeks broadcast images of severely malnourished, skeletal children in Niger, many too weak to brush flies from their faces. Scores have died.

Morocco has begun airlifting rice, powdered milk and other food stuffs to Niger as part of an effort to ease hunger pangs afflicting one in four of the West African state’s 12-million people, a government official said on Friday. A Moroccan-staffed rural clinic to treat malnutrition has also been erected in the hard-hit central Maradi region.

Niger’s government on Friday squashed any notion that food would be distributed free of charge to the country’s citizens teetering on the edge of a food crisis that could affect about three million people. The reaction followed Thursday’s rally by several thousand people demanding free food stocks.

Thousands of people rallied on Thursday in the Niger capital to demand the distribution of free rations to stave off a food crisis that already threatens about three million people. The vast desert state’s food supply travails have been compounded by years of drought and last year’s invasion of desert locusts.

Niger police acknowledged on Wednesday that officers had toured the capital, Niamey, this week to remove all copies of the independent weekly Testimony (Le Temoin) ahead of the inauguration of re-elected President Mamadou Tandja. Tandja was inaugurated on Tuesday after his second-round victory on December 4.

Incumbent Niger President Mamadou Tandja is leading in the country’s presidential elections, national radio said on Friday. ”Provisional overall results will be known today [Friday] … with the answer to the question whether there will be a second round,” the radio said.