Niger Says 26,000 Displaced People in Southeast Are Now Home

NIAMEY, NIGER - More than 26,000 people who fled in 2015 jihadist attacks in southeastern Niger were returned to their hometown, in the Diffa region, local authorities said on Friday.

"These are 26,573 people from 8,190 households who have already been transported to 19 villages at the end of the first phase of the IDP return operations," an official from the governorate of the Diffa region told AFP. This region bordering Nigeria is home to 300,000 Nigerian refugees and internally displaced persons, driven out by the atrocities of the jihadists of the Nigerian group Boko Haram and its dissident branch of the Islamic State group in West Africa (Iswap), according to the U.N. Nigerien public television showed images on Thursday evening of the last wave ending this first phase, of 11,733 people en route to their locality of origin in trucks chartered by the authorities.