Belmokhtar group threatens more attacks in Niger

DUBAI (AFP) - The jihadist group led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar that claimed twin suicide car bombings in Niger that killed at least 20 people threatened on Friday to launch further attacks in the country.

"We will launch further operations" in Niger, the group said in a statement posted on Islamist Internet forums that also threatened France and countries involved militarily in battling Islamist extremists in Mali.

Belmokhtar's group, the "Signatories in Blood", said in the statement that Thursday's attacks were its "first response to the statement of the president of Niger (Mahamadou Issoufou), from his masters in Paris that he had crushed the jihad and mujahedeen militarily" in the region.

The group threatened more attacks and even to "bring the fight to the interior of his country unless he withdraws his mercenary army" from Mali.

"We thank God that France only won a propaganda victory with its Crusader war on the rule of sharia (Islamic law)," the group added, saying that its withdrawal from towns in Mali during the French intervention "was a military choice imposed by the the circumstances of war and our desire to preserve the blood of Muslims".

The attacks in Niger on Thursday came four months after Belmokhtar's group which is linked to Al-Qaeda seized a desert gas plant in neighbouring Algeria in a siege that left 38 hostages dead, also in retaliation for the intervention in Mali.