Militants inflicted heavy losses on Benin's armed forces during an attack this week on a fortified military post in the north of the country, the military said in a statement.

Benin's armed forces have suffered heavy losses in an attack on one of their most well-equipped positions in the north, where troops are trying to curb cross-border assaults by Islamist militants, the national guard's chief of staff said on Thursday.

BENIN’S army has suffered heavy losses during an attack near the country’s border with Niger and Burkina Faso. National Guard chief of staff Colonel Faizou Gomina said on Thursday that one of the military’s positions in the Alibori region had been attacked the previous evening.

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Twenty-eight soldiers were killed in an attack in northern Benin, a security source told AFP on Thursday, as violence blamed on jihadists based in neighbouring countries increases.