Niger suspends BBC for 'spreading false news'

“BBC broadcasts false information aimed at destabilising social calm and undermining the troops' morale,” communications minister Raliou Sidi Mohamed said in letters to radio stations that rebroadcast BBC content.

Mohamed asked the stations to suspend BBC's programmes “with immediate effect.”

The BBC has not publicly commented on the suspension.

BBC programmes, including those in Hausa, the most-spoken language in Niger, are broadcast in the West African country through local radio partners to reach a large audience across the region.

The British broadcaster had reported on Wednesday that gunmen had killed more than 90 Nigerien soldiers and more than 40 civilians in two villages near the border with Burkina Faso. Niger said the report was false.

RFI suspended too

The French broadcaster Radio France International also reported on the attack with the same death toll.

Niger's authorities denied that an attack happened in the area in a statement read on state television and said it would file a complaint against RFI for “incitement to genocide.”

Niger, along with its neighbours Burkina Faso and Mali, has for over a decade grappled with attacks by terrorist groups, including some allied with al-Qaeda and Daesh.

Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the governments have expelled French forces.

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