Rafini announced the death toll in comments broadcast on national television on Sunday due to a visit to the zone, near the border with Mali. He did not say who was responsible.
Security sources said on Saturday that at least 70 civilians had been killed during simultaneous raids by suspected Islamic militants in the villages of Tchombangou and Zaroumdareye.
Niger has also seen assassination killings between rival ethnic communities caused by jihadist violence and competition for scarce resources.
Saturday’s attacks come on the same day that the Electoral Commission announced the outcome of the first round of elections to replace President Mahamadou Issoufou, who is stepping down after a decade in power.
Reigning party candidate Mohamed Bazoum, who won first place, on Sunday expressed his condolences to the victims.
The attacks, he said in a video he posted on social media, “remind us that terrorist groups pose a serious threat to the cohesion within communities, like no other.”
Bazoum will face former president Mahamane Ousmane in a second round expected on February 21.
The president of neighboring Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, condemned the killings and described the incident as “a new call for a united action by African leaders against terrorism.”
“We are facing serious security challenges as a result of the vicious campaign of indiscriminate violence by terrorists in the Sahel, and only united action can help us defeat these evil enemies of humanity,” Buhari said on Sunday in Abuja, a statement from the state. House.
The United Nations strongly condemned the terrorist attacks, which ‘led to the murder and injury of many innocent civilians’.
“I express my condolences to the Niger Mission to the UN and the people of Niger,” the President of the UN General Assembly said in a tweet on Sunday.
Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement that he hoped the Nigerian authorities would spare no effort to identify the perpetrators of this heinous act and bring them to justice quickly, while improving the protection of civilians. word. ‘