3 hours ago
4
The brazen attack on the international airport and nearby military airbase in Niamey, Niger’s capital, came overnight between January 28 and 29.
Balls of orange fire flew across the sky as the Nigerien army attempted to respond while residents ducked for cover and whispered prayers, as shown in videos on social media. ISIL (ISIS) in Sahel Province, or ISSP – a Niger-based outfit earlier known as the ISIL affiliate in the Greater Sahara or ISGS – has since claimed responsibility and says it killed several soldiers, although the Nigerien army disputes this.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 items- list 1 of 3Niger military gov’t says France, Benin, Ivory Coast behind airport attack
- list 2 of 3ISIL claims responsibility for Niger airport attack
- list 3 of 3US bombs target ISIL in Nigeria: What’s really going on?
Analysts say the daring attack shows ISSP’s growing confidence at a time when the swarm of armed groups operating across the troubled Sahel region in Western Africa is expanding its areas of operation with advanced technology. Many of its fighters had breached military drone hangars using RPGs and mortars, and managed to damage several aircraft and one civilian aeroplane, according to videos from the group.
“This is unprecedented,” Heni Nsaibia, a senior analyst at the conflict monitoring think tank, ACLED, told Al Jazeera, noting that ISSP usually limits offences to rural areas and uses rudimentary weapons like AK-47s.
“They are refining their attacks and becoming more experienced in guerrilla warfare. To be able to infiltrate and penetrate the capital speaks to itself that they have tactical strength and boldness,” he said.
Although officially unconfirmed, conflict trackers suggest that ISSP may have deployed a drone in the assault, in what would mirror a region-wide trend that analysts say marks a dangerous escalation in the Sahel crisis. ISIL affiliates have used explosives-laden drones in rural attacks in Nigeria, but never in Niger.
“We have videos showing there was nocturnal gunfire from the Nigerien air defence,” Nsaibia added. “It’s possible they detected drones [from ISIL] used for surveillance, but it’s only a hypothesis.”
Military-ruled Niger has seen a rise in armed attacks since July 2023, when the army seized power and expelled hundreds of French and US troops that previously provided air and combat support.
Neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, which are also governed by the military, are also facing similar violence as several armed groups lay claim to swaths of territory across their porous borders. The groups aim to control territory without Western influence, and according to an extreme interpretation of Islamic law.
All three countries have pivoted from French troops to the Russian government-controlled Africa Corps, a paramilitary group whose effectiveness has been mixed. In a statement following the Niamey attack, the Nigerien and Russian governments said Africa Corps fighters helped “repel” the assault and that 20 of the attackers were killed, with four soldiers wounded.
A satellite image shows Niamey international airport and military bases after gunfire and explosions in Niger, January 29, 2026 [Handout/Vantor via Reuters]Drone use surges across the Sahel
Military drone attacks by the Nigerien forces and other parties to the conflict are common, but the armed groups themselves are increasingly repurposing easy-to-buy, easy-to-smuggle Chinese-made commercial drones for strikes by attaching improvised explosive devices (IEDs), grenades, or small mortar shells to them.
It is a “low-cost, high-impact” capability that provides the groups with real-time intelligence, minimises their need to risk fighters as suicide bombers, and makes it harder for militaries to detect and counter them, Rida Lyammouri, a senior fellow at the Morocco-based Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), said.
The most prolific drone user is the al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which is primarily based in Mali and Burkina Faso. The group has cells in Niger, Togo, and on the Benin-Nigeria border.
JNIM first used a drone in 2023, but without a significant impact. However, the group has since rapidly integrated the technology into battlefield operations, often pairing drone attacks with ground assaults in a two-pronged approach. Between 2023 and 2025, ACLED recorded JNIM using drones at least 89 times, with 69 incidents being for attacks. At least five other events saw JNIM drones crash or be intercepted.
“What’s alarming is how quickly they’ve developed this knowledge,” Lyammouri said.
The real risk, he added, lies beyond the group’s ability to use drones as a weapon.
“The drones used are very small, and they don’t carry an important amount of explosives, so the damages a lot of times are not as significant. But what is important is how they use drones to collect information and gather intelligence,” he said.
JNIM relies on the DJI M30T model, a high-end drone with an in-built camera ideal for night-time surveillance. The cheaper DJI Mavic, which costs between $500 and $700, is also part of the fleet.
Drones are likely helping the group monitor fuel trucks attempting to break its blockade on the Malian capital of Bamako, experts say. Since September, JNIM has sealed off highways used by fuel tankers importing oil from neighbouring Senegal and the Ivory Coast, causing periods of fuel shortages across Mali.
Similarly, the separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), which is fighting for an independent state in northern Mali, released videos last February showing its fighters controlling a first-person view (FPV) drone – advanced models that help pilots have a “cockpit” viewing experience via special goggles. The FLA conducted 28 drone attacks between 2024 and 2025, according to ACLED. It used an FPV to down a Malian military helicopter in the northern Tessalit region in July 2024, according to the conflict reporting website, Military Africa.
ISIL affiliates are meanwhile using drones to a much lesser extent.
The Nigeria-based ISIL affiliate in West Africa Province (ISWAP) has deployed armed drones 10 times between 2024 and 2026, according to ACLED. In January, the group targeted Nigerian forces raiding one of its hideouts in northern Borno State with multiple armed drones.
The new shift is being accelerated by offline artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can help drones avoid traditional detection and jamming methods, Lyammouri said. They are also using these tools to generate training material, AI-generated images and press releases, he added. The open-source MISTRAL, a ChatGPT rival that is useful for everything from offline searches to content generation, is one such tool.
The shift to drone use by armed groups is global. ACLED in 2025 reported that 469 armed groups – including rebel groups, militias, gangs, and transnational cartels around the world – deployed a drone at least once in the past five years, up from only 10 groups using the technology in 2020.
Cooperation at a time of tensions
The likely next stage for drone use by armed groups could be AI-enabled “drone swarms” that could launch large-scale remote attacks on government positions featuring several drones at a time, analysts note.
For the groups, there is plenty of incentive to evolve quickly. Each group is willing to lay claim to its territory, and attacks like the one on Niamey not only aim to undermine the Nigerien government but also to signal to rival groups like JNIM not to intrude on that area, Nsaibia said.
Countries in the region will need to work together to jointly fight the groups’ new strategies, especially as they expand geographically and share technologies, Lyammouri warned.
Their “tactics are spreading and require a coordinated response”, he said, one that will necessitate bringing together drone warfare experts, AI researchers, and regional military planners to simulate the recorded drone warfare scenarios, like JNIM’s drone-assisted ground assaults and intelligence-gathering patterns.
That is tricky, however, amid regional tensions and a fragmented security response.
Following the 2023 coup in Niger, relations with neighbouring Nigeria became strained. Soon after, the two called off formal defence cooperation following threats by Abuja to lead the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc into a military intervention to restore civilian rule.
Wider tensions between ECOWAS and the military governments in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso escalated last year and led to the three exiting to form their own union, the Alliance of Sahel States.
However, this week, Nigerien and Nigerian security officials met in Abuja to discuss stronger border security to hamper smuggling routes that the armed groups use to transport weapons.
A collective regional solution is the only one that may succeed, experts agree.
Barring strong counters, important urban centres like Niamey, usually deemed safe, are going to be more “at risk in the medium to long term”, Nsaibia said.
