OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) – Sixty-six women and children captured by an armed group last week in northern Burkina Faso have been freed, Burkinabè radio and television and the government said on Friday.
The kidnapping, attributed by the authorities to Islamist rebels, took place on January 12 and 13 in the Sahelian province of Soum.
Security forces carried out an operation and found 27 women and 39 infants, children and young girls in neighboring Centre-Nord province, Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina said.
“They have regained their freedom after eight long days at the hands of their captors,” RTB said.
A government source confirmed the information without providing details.
Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, is battling a violent Islamist insurgency, which spread from neighboring Mali in 2015, despite international military efforts to contain it.
(Report Thiam Ndiaga, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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