Militant leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar masterminded the two suicide bombs in Niger on Thursday, reports say.

Mr Belmokhtar is said to have “supervised” the bombings, according to Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar.

Suicide bombers struck a military camp and a French-run uranium mine in two towns in north-west Niger, killing 20 people.

French special forces took part in an operation at the base near Agadez on Friday morning, a French minister says.

Speaking on BFM television, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said: “The situation has stabilised as we speak, especially in Agadez, where our special forces intervened to back the Nigerien forces.”

Niger’s government spokesman Morou Amadou told the Associated Press news agency that French forces had flown in to Agadez after the attack on Thursday morning.

Government officials say they made a mistake when they claimed the militants were holding a group of soldiers hostage. None of them had been held, they now say.

However local and military sources have told the BBC that two soldiers from the Nigerien army, who were still with the militants, were killed in the assault on Friday morning.

Mr Belmokhtar’s group threatened further attacks, in a statement posted on internet forums, reports AFP.

The bomb at a barracks in Agadez killed 19, including 18 soldiers. Four attackers died. A fifth held out but officials said he too was overpowered.

The attack on the Somair mine, in the town of Arlit, killed one person and injured 14, its operator Areva said.

Alakhbar quoted El-Hassen Ould Khalil, a spokesman for Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group as saying: “It was Belmokhtar who himself supervised the operational plans of attacks.”

The attacks “targeted elite French forces” who were providing security at the uranium mine that is majority-owned by Areva, Mr Khalil added.

An online statement, reportedly signed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, read: “This is the first of our responses to the statement of the president of Niger – from his masters in Paris – that he eliminated jihad and the mujahideen militarily.”

Earlier, the jihadist Mujao group had said it had carried out the two attacks. However, Mr Khalil’s statement to Alakhbar said Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group jointly led the attacks with Mujao.

Mujao spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui said on Thursday that the operations targeted “the enemies of Islam in Niger”, according to AFP.

“We attacked France, and Niger because of its co-operation with France, in the war against Sharia,” he added, thought to be a reference to French and Nigerien involvement in combating Islamists in neighbouring Mali.

Algerian attack

In his statement threatening further attacks, Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group warned against Western intervention in the region.

“Columns of commandos and those seeking martyrdom are ready and waiting for their targets,” the statement said.

“We will have more operations, by the strength and power of Allah, and not only that, but we will move the battle to the inside of his country if he (the president of Niger) doesn’t withdraw his mercenary army,” another statement to Mauritania’s ANI news agency said.

On Thursday, French President Francois Hollande vowed to protect French interests and co-operate with Niger in its “fight against terrorism”.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar was believed to be behind the deadly attack on an internationally run Algerian gas plant in January in which 37 hostages and 29 insurgents were killed.

He broke away from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) last year and formed a new jihadist group, known variously as the Signed-in-Blood Battalion, the Masked Men Brigade and the Khaled Abu al-Abbas Brigade.

Armed forces in Chad said he died in a raid in northern Mali on 2 March, although there was no confirmation and his death has been declared many times before.

Mujao (the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) is a splinter group of AQIM which operates mostly in northern Mali.

It says its objective is to spread jihad to West Africa rather than confine itself to the Sahel and Maghreb regions – the main focus of AQIM.

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