At least twelve civilians were killed on Saturday during the attack on a locality by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso, AFP learned on Sunday February 5 from local and security sources.
“On Saturday afternoon, armed men attacked Bani“, a locality located about 40 km from Dori in the Sahel region, said a resident and “we deplore twelve deaths according to the first assessment“, another witness speaking of”thirteen dead“. A security source confirmed the attack, citing “a heavy toll“, without giving a number.
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The first inhabitant specified that the armed men “targeted the police station, the town hall and a school“. “Concessions (homes) and a mosque were hit by the gunfire of the attackers before the response of defense and security forces“, he added. The second told him that “it was men on motorbikes who attacked the town. They attacked several targets“. “This toll is likely to increase, because we have missing and injured“, he added.
The security source confirmed that there was “cases of missing persons, but the search continues“. “Several armed individuals were also neutralized in the response and the hunt that followed“, she said.
Spiral of jihadist violence
Attacks attributed to suspected jihadists continue to increase in Burkina. On Monday, ten gendarmes and two Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP, army auxiliaries) stationed in the locality of Falagountou, in the Sahel region (North), were killed during “a terrorist attack“, according to the army. On the same day, fifteen people were found dead, in the south-west of the country, near Côte d’Ivoire, after being kidnapped the day before by suspected jihadists.
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Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in 2022, has been caught since 2015 in the spiral of jihadist violence that appeared in Mali a few years earlier and which has spread beyond its borders. Attacks by groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have left thousands dead and some two million displaced. These groups occupy about 40% of Burkinabe territory. Captain Ibrahim Traoré, transitional president resulting from a military coup on September 30, 2022 – the second in eight months – has set himself the objective of “the reconquest of the territory occupied by these hordes of terrorists“.