At least a dozen civilians were killed on Saturday in an attack attributed to jihadists against the village of Namssiguian, in northern Burkina Faso, security and local sources told AFP on Sunday.
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Saturday morning “unidentified armed individuals carried out a deadly attack in the village of Namssiguian, in the province of Bam“, declared a security source, specifying that “the provisional toll established yesterday (Saturday) was about ten civilians killed“. This balance sheet can stillto evolve” because “families are still without news of some of their relatives“, she added.
A resident of the area for his part spoke of a provisional toll of at least 9 dead. There is also “significant material damage as shops and businesses were set on fire“. “The terrorists stayed for several hours in the village where they looted and destroyed“, he added, saying that “the attackers had previously sabotaged the telephone antennas, making any communication impossible“.
Like its neighbors Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to armed jihadist groups, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. Despite operations against these groups, the army is struggling to contain the violence that has killed more than 2,000 people in six years, and forced more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes.
At the end of December, an attack by suspected jihadists killed 41 people in northern Burkina Faso, including civilians and army auxiliaries. According to several Burkinabè media, this ambush by suspected jihadists targeted a convoy of traders, escorted by Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP).
This attack was the deadliest since that of Inata (north), mid-November, where 57 people including 53 gendarmes had been killed, arousing the exasperation of the population.
The deadliest since the start of jihadist violence in 2015 in Burkina remains to this day that of Solhan, in the province of Sahel (north), during which at least 132 people were killed, according to an official report.
Attacks of varying magnitude against civilians or members of the Defense and Security Forces have become almost daily in Burkina. On Thursday, a policeman was killed and “several terrorists neutralizedduring an armed attack against a checkpoint in the north, according to security sources. Two days earlier, at least four soldiers had been killed in an attack attributed to jihadist groups against a unit of the Markoye military detachment, still in the north of the country, near the Niger border.
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Four senior army officers were appointed on Thursday to head regions in the north and east of Burkina Faso, the areas hardest hit by jihadists.