An attack by Islamic militants on military posts in northern Benin last week left at least 54 soldiers dead, the West African country’s government said.

Authorities had previously said that only eight soldiers were killed on April 17.

JNIM, an extremist group linked to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it killed 70 soldiers, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The attacks took place in Benin’s northeastern Alibori department, which borders Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria.

Benin has for years faced spillover violence in its north from Sahel countries like Burkina Faso and Niger in their battle against Islamic extremist groups.

The tri-border area has long been a hotbed for extremist violence, primarily concentrated around the W-Arly-Pendjari Complex. The large national park spills over into all three countries and has become a launching pad for cross-border attacks by militants.

Government spokesperson Wilfried Léandre Houngbédji on Wednesday deplored the lack of cooperation with Benin’s neighbors in the fight against extremist groups.

“The points where these attacks of April 17 took place are on the border, so you can understand that if, on the other side of the border, there was a force like ours, these attacks would not take place in this way or would not even occur,” he said.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday there was no pressure on Russia to move forward towards a deal that would provide lasting peace in Ukraine.

“I do not see pressure on Russia now and new sanctions packages against the aggression of the Russian Federation,” Zelenskyy said, speaking in Pretoria alongside South African president Cyril Ramaphosa.

Zelenskyy was speaking on a visit to South Africa, which he said he will cut short to return home because of an attack, which killed at least nine people and injured more than 70, the deadliest assault on the city since last July.

The strikes took place just as peace efforts are coming to a head. Zelenskyy said preliminary information indicated more than 250 drones and ballistic missiles were involved in the attack.

“We believe that with more pressure on the Russian Federation, we will be able to bring our parties closer. In diplomatic language, we will be able to get closer to a complete, unconditional ceasefire,” he added.

Asked what compromises Ukraine was willing to make in the course of peace negotiations with Russia, Zelenskyy said a willingness to sit down “with the terrorists that did it all on our land, exclusively on our land, that is a great compromise.”

The Ukrainian president’s visit signalled a historic breakthrough in relations between South Africa and Ukraine, which had previously been strained by Pretoria’s friendly relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Kyiv has however made efforts in recent months to increase its diplomatic presence and ties across the African continent.

Representatives from the Congolese government and the M23/AFC (Mouvement of 23rd March/Alliance of the Congo River) rebel groups have agreed on halting the fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a statement released by the two parties on Wednesday night.

While brutal fighting between the Congolese armed forces and the Rwandan-backed rebels has ravaged North and South Kivu provinces since January and previous negotiations yielded few results, the announcement has been seen as a first positive step towards an end to the violence.

Previous truces were however quickly violated and the road towards durable peace in a conflict that has simmered for several decades, is still long.

And while both sides affirmed that the talks in Doha were “frank and constructive”, some doubts remain over the progress of the negotiations, which officials described as slow.

The war in eastern DRC has displaced hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and killed at least 7,000 people since January, according to the Congolese authorities.