SITE Intelligence Group reports that an Al Qaeda offshoot has claimed responsibility for the incident in northern Togo

As reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, an al Qaeda offshoot has taken credit for an attack that occurred on Saturday in northern Togo that resulted in the deaths of at least six persons.

An army barracks near the Burkina Faso border was the target of the strike. The terrorist violence that has devastated Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, its northern neighbors, for more than ten years, has not yet reached Togo.

A Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) statement was cited by SITE late on Monday. It stated that “on July 20, fighters took control of a Togolese army barracks in Dapaong, in the northern part of the country, killing six elements and seizing many weapons.”

A spokesman for the Togolian army told Reuters that he had sufficient information to comment on the incident.

Along with attacking eight other military operations in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, JNIM claimed credit for those strikes in its statement, claiming to have killed over 22 servicemen in four days.

The beginnings of violence in the Sahel region south of the Sahara occurred in 2012 when jihadist organizations took advantage of a Tuareg uprising in northern Mali.

Since then, despite expensive military attempts to drive them back, groups associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have taken control of land, expanding into Burkina Faso, Niger, and, more lately, the north of coastal nations like Togo.

Millions of people have been displaced and thousands of people have died as a result.

Since 2020, there have been two coups in Mali, two in Burkina Faso, and one in Niger as a result of the authorities’ failure to protect citizens.

Since then, juntas have abandoned their conventional Western friends in favor of Russian assistance in combating the gangs. The three nations established a combined force in March to address security challenges on their own borders.