4 Moroccan truck drivers disappear on Burkina-Niger border

Rabat, Morocco — 

Four Moroccan motortruck drivers went missing Saturday arsenic they crossed the restive borderline country betwixt Burkina Faso and Niger, according to a root from the Moroccan Embassy successful Burkina Faso and a Moroccan transport union.

Three trucks, 1 carrying a spare driver, disappeared arsenic they drove without an escort from Dori successful Burkina Faso to Tera successful Niger, an country known for jihadi threats, the diplomatic root said.

Junta-led Burkina Faso and Niger are battling Islamist militant groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State, whose insurgencies person destabilized Sahel states successful West Africa implicit the past decade.

The Moroccan diplomatic root said the embassy was moving unneurotic with Burkina Faso authorities to find the drivers.

Authorities successful Burkina Faso person been organizing information convoys to escort trucks successful the borderline country to support against militant attacks, the root said.

The trucks acceptable disconnected aft waiting for a week without getting an escort, Echarki El Hachmi, caput wide of Morocco's transporters' union, told Reuters.

The trucks, loaded with infrastructure equipment, departed weeks agone from Casablanca heading to Niger, helium said.

El Hachmi urged much extortion successful areas of precocious hazard arsenic the fig of Moroccan trucks crossing the Sahel continues to rise.

Earlier this month, a convoy of Moroccan trucks was attacked connected the Malian borderline with Mauritania, though determination were nary casualties, El Hachmi said.