(Adds ruling party, rebel comment)

By Abdoulaye Massalatchi

NIAMEY, Dec 11 (Reuters) - A driver died on Tuesday after his vehicle hit a landmine in the central Niger town of Tahoua, the second civilian killed in two days in what the authorities said was an urban offensive by Tuareg-led rebels.

The incident took place late on Monday in Tahoua, some 650 km (406 miles) northeast of the capital Niamey and the site of a planned visit by President Mamadou Tandja next week.

The driver of the vehicle died in hospital on Tuesday, medical sources said. Another civilian died on Monday after his truck ran over an anti-tank mine in the central town of Maradi.

The attack at Maradi, some 550 km east of the capital Niamey, was the first successful urban attack during an uprising by the Tuareg-led rebel Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ).

The MNJ has killed at least 49 soldiers, mainly using land mines on desert highways, in a 10-month campaign for greater autonomy for Niger's isolated, uranium-rich north.

"The situation is damaging the foundation of the nation. We call on the MNJ to stop mining its own territory and to lay down its weapons in the interest of Niger," Tandja's MNSD party said in a statement read on national radio.

But in a statement on its Web site, the MNJ denied responsibility for laying the mines.

"The laying of mines by the Niger army militias, right in the centre of town, so as to more strongly accuse the MNJ and justify a repressive administration against an ethnic group, will not make the partisans of justice stand down," it said.

Tandja's administration last month extended a state of alert in northern Niger and said the MNJ was planning to take its uprising from desert regions to towns and cities.

On Nov. 21 police foiled an attempt to detonate an anti-tank mine in a fuel depot in the town of Dosso, 140 km east of Niamey. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalatchi, editing by Daniel Flynn and Robert Woodward)

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