Eye-witnesses report massacre of 32 Tuareg - independent investigation demanded

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) appealed on Tuesday to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, to investigate charges that there has been a massacre of 32 Tuareg in the north of Niger . "If the Tuareg have been killed on account of their ethnic origin it is very likely that there will be an escalation of the Tuareg conflict in Niger and Mali ”, warned the GfbV Africa correspondent, Ulrich Delius.

Eye-witnesses report that on 1st October five vehicles near the Algerian border were stopped by Niger soldiers. The separated the twelve light-skinned Tuareg from the black African occupants of the vehicles and shot them. A day later soldiers killed 20 Turaeg in their nomad tents near the road between Arlit and Assamakka. While the Niger army declares that they were "19 bandits”, eye-witnesses emphasise that all the Tuareg were unarmed civilians.

At the beginning of the 90s the Tuareg conflict in Niger and Mali escalated following the massacre of Tuareg civilians by regular soldiers. A peace treaty ended the fighting and the breaches of human rights in 1995. However in January 2007 the conflict broke out again in Niger and in August 2007 it spread to the neighbouring country of Mali .