Internet users favorable to the Alliance of Sahel States claim that a former French soldier was killed during the attack on Niamey airport, Niger, at the end of January. They put forward as proof a supposed portrait of the soldier. This image, however, was created by AI.

Published on: 02/12/2026 - 11:23 Modified on: 02/12/2026 - 11:24

On the night of January 28 to 29, 2026, Niamey international airport in Niger was attacked by a group of Islamist attackers. The site is also home to military base 101 of the Nigerien army and elements of the Africa Corps, a unit under the Russian Defense Ministry. The day after the attack, General Abdourahamane Tiani, head of state of Niger, accused France, Ivory Coast and Benin of having been the "sponsors" of the attack carried out, according to him, by mercenaries.

Read alsoNiger: the Islamic State organization claims responsibility for Thursday's attack on Niamey airport

The attack was claimed on February 2 by the Islamic State in the Sahel (EIS) group. The terrorist organization then released a video proving that jihadists had succeeded in destroying several military aircraft within the airport itself.

Despite this claim, a rumor persists among supporters of General Tiani and the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) which brings together Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso: a Frenchman was allegedly one of the attackers and died during the attack.

An AI-generated portrait

According to Internet users and pro-AES media on Facebook, the supposed Frenchman killed during the Niamey airport attack is “a former soldier who served at the Niamey embassy”. To support their claims, these Internet users share a photograph of the alleged soldier, alive and in uniform.

However, this claim is misleading. First of all, the portrait of the so-called French soldier is fake: it was generated by artificial intelligence, as certain image anomalies suggest. The shirt buttonhole has misaligned or poorly shaped buttons. There is also a button missing on the right side of the collar. AIs still sometimes struggle to correctly generate fine details.

Then, Internet users do not agree on the complicity of foreign countries from which the soldier would have benefited. Some Internet users claim that the use of the soldier's phone would reveal that he received a last call from Ivory Coast before dying. Others maintain, on the contrary, that this last call came from Benin.

So many inaccuracies which add to the confusion around this story.

This disinformation which therefore also targets Benin is not new. In November, General Tiani falsely declared that thousands of French soldiers had landed in Benin with the aim of destabilizing Niger. Côte d'Ivoire, for its part, summoned the Niger ambassador at the end of January to express its strong protest after the comments of Abdourahamane Tiani who accused the Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, of being a "sponsor" of the jihadists.

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