Fifty-one soldiers were killed on Friday February 17 in an ambush by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso, according to the latest report released by the army on Monday. “Operations are continuing with an intensification of air actions which has made it possible to neutralize a hundred terrorists and destroy their equipment, say the military. This figure is in addition to the sixty terrorists neutralized since the start of the response. »
A military patrol ” moving “ was the victim of an attack ” complex “ Friday between Deou and Oursi (province of Oudalan) in the Sahel region, bordering Mali and Niger, the army said on Saturday without giving an assessment. She added that “intense fighting” had opposed the members of the military unit taken to task “to an armed terrorist group”.
This ambush could be the deadliest ever committed against the security forces since that of November 2021 in Inata (North): 57 people, including 53 gendarmes, were then killed after unsuccessfully appealing for help.
Under-equipped army
Deadly raids attributed to jihadists are increasing in Burkina. More than a hundred people – civilians and soldiers – have died in the past two weeks, according to a count by Agence France-Presse. Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in 2022, has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of jihadist violence that appeared in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and which has spread beyond their borders. The violence over the past seven years has claimed more than 10,000 lives according to NGOs, and some 2 million displaced.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré, transitional president resulting from a coup d’etat on September 30, 2022, had set himself the objective of “reclaim” the approximately 40% of the territory controlled by jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organization. However, since he took power, attacks attributed to these groups have only increased.
To try to stem this trend, Captain Traoré, who demanded the departure of French special forces from Ouagadougou, intends to forge partnerships with new countries, including Russia, to supply his under-equipped army. However, he denied any presence of mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, whom Westerners accuse of being present in Mali. According to the Malian authorities, the Russians present on their territory are « instructors ».