Forty-four civilians were killed and several people injured when two villages in northeastern Burkina Faso, near the Niger border, were attacked by “armed terrorist groups”, on the night of Thursday April 6 to Friday April 7, the governor of the Sahel region announced on Saturday. Thirty-one people were killed in Kourakou and thirteen in Tondobi, said Lieutenant-Colonel Rodolphe Sorgho.
The governor assured that “actions to stabilize the locality are underway after [une] offensive led by the Defense and Security Forces (FDS) which enabled the armed terrorist groups which perpetrated the said attack to be incapacitated”. This double attack took place in localities located five kilometers from Seytenga, a border town with Niger, bereaved in June 2022 by an attack claimed by the Islamic State organization in the greater Sahara which left 86 dead. Lieutenant-Colonel Sorgho also invited the local populations on Saturday “to unite with the FDS and [à] enlist as volunteers for the defense of the fatherland in order to participate in the defense of their respective localities”.
Burkina Faso, in particular its northern part, has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organization, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians and soldiers according to reports. NGOs, and some 2 million internally displaced people.
The country has been ruled since September by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in a coup, the second in eight months. Mr. Traoré had announced in February his “intact determination” to fight the jihadists, despite the multiplication of attacks.
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