After the relative lull which followed the takeover of Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, “fall” of President Kaboré in January, the violence resumed.
Le Monde with AFP
About forty army and civilians were killed on Saturday during three attacks by alleged jihadists in the north and eastern Burkina Faso, learned AFP from Sources on Monday, May 16 security and local.
The deadliest attack targeted the volunteers for the defense of the fatherland (VDP, civilian army auxilions) of the commune of Guessel in the Sahel region (North), killing “around twenty people, including eight VDP “, according to one of their managers.
He added that on the same day, five other auxilions and a civilian were killed in Markoye, in the same region, which confirmed a security source by speaking of a “series of attacks which mainly targeted volunteers “. “Measures have been taken to [send] reinforcements in the zone and the protection of harshly proven populations,” she said.
In the province of Kompienga (South-East) close to the borders of Togo and Benin, “a convoy of civilians escorted by army auxiliaries was targeted by an attack in Namouyouri,” said another Security source of the region by specifying that “fifteen civilians has been killed”.
A resident of the province said that in addition to civilians, “three auxilions” were also killed during this attack. He launched a call for help “for the management of a dozen injured people”.
During the night of Saturday to Sunday, another simultaneous attack on the Faramana gendarmerie and police stations (west), near the Malian border, also injured two of the security forces, according to a security source .
dialogue
Burkina Faso has been the target of jihadist attacks since 2015, perpetrated by armed movements, some of which are affiliated with Al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, and which left more than 2,000 dead and 1.8 million moved.
If the north and east of the country concentrate the majority of these attacks, certain regions of the West are also affected by violence, less regularly.
The new strong man in the country, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who overthrew on January 24 the president elected Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, accused of being ineffective in the face of these violence, assured want to make the security question his “priority”.
After a relative lull in the weeks following his takeover, Mr. Damiba’s military regime faces an resurgence of alleged jihadist assaults which left more than one hundred dead, civilians and military.
A week ago, the Burkinabé army announced in a statement that it has “neutralized” at least fifty “terrorists” by retalling an ambush in the northwest and during an operation in the southwest.
In early April, the Head of State announced the creation of local dialogue committees with local jihadist groups to try to stop violence.