Niger ? Rebels attacked an army base in Niger on Friday, killing 13 soldiers, wounding 30 and taking at least 47 prisoners, according to a government statement.

The statement read on national TV by government spokesman Mohamed Ben Omar said a group of heavily armed men attacked security forces early Friday in a remote Sahara outpost not far from the Libyan border.

In a radio address soon after, Aghali Alambo, the commander of the Niger Movement for Justice, an ethnic Tuareg group that earlier this week claimed responsibility for an assault on a local airport, said his group was behind the attack.

Omar identified the place of the attack as “near Mount Tazarzat, by a water hole,” an area approximately 1,200 miles from Niamey. He declined to identify the attackers, just as earlier in the week, officials said “bandits” were behind an attack on a Sahara airport.