– File Photo by AP

NIAMEY: Fifty-nine suspected followers of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM) arrested in Niger were simply migrants, officials said Saturday, admitting a blunder by troops who killed their driver.

A security source in the northern city of Agadez said the 59, who had been heading for Algeria when their truck ran into fire in mid-September, had been released.

Agadez governor Colonel Garba Maikado told Radio France Internationale, “It was an accident, a blunder,” while state radio reported that he and other senior officers had gone Friday to the dead driver's home town of Arlit to offer their regrets to his family.

The defence ministry said on September 16 that a clash in the mountainous Air region of northern Niger had left one soldier and three militants dead and two soldiers wounded.

A statement read on national television also said the troops had captured 59 AQIM recruits aged between 19 and 20, along with two vehicles and a quantity of weapons.

Local officials have said nothing more about the reported clash, but the magazine Air-Info, published in Agadez, and said there were two separate incidents.