A militant attack in northern Burkina Faso on Tuesday killed 35 civilians, almost all of them women, Burkinabe President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said, one of the deadliest assaults in nearly five years of militant violence in the West African country.
Seven soldiers and 80 militants were also killed in attacks on a military base and the town of Arbinda in Soum Province, the army said.
Burkina Faso has seen regular militant attacks, which have left hundreds dead since the start of 2015 when militant violence began to spread across the Sahel region.
Photo: AFP
“A large group of terrorists simultaneously attacked the military base and the civilian population in Arbinda,” Burkinabe Army Chief of Staff General Oumarou Sadou said in a statement.
“This barbaric attack resulted in the deaths of 35 civilian victims, most of them women,” Kabore added on Twitter, praising the “bravery and commitment” of the defense and security forces.
Burkinabe Minister of Communications Remis Dandjinou later said 31 of the civilian victims were women, adding that about 20 soldiers were injured.
Kabore has declared 48 hours of national mourning.
The morning raid was carried out by dozens of militants on motorbikes and lasted several hours before armed forces backed by the air force drove the militants back, the army said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but extremist violence in Burkina Faso has been blamed on militants linked to both to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State groups.
Leaders of the G5 Sahel nations earlier this month held summit talks in Niger, calling for closer cooperation and international support in the battle against the Islamist threat.
Militant violence has spread across the vast Sahel region, especially in Burkina Faso and Niger, having started when armed Islamists revolted in northern Mali in 2012.
The Sahel region of Africa lies to the south of the Sahara Desert and stretches across the breadth of the African continent.
The G5 group is made up of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, whose impoverished armies have the support of French forces, as well as the UN in Mali.
In Burkina Faso, more than 700 people have been killed and about 560,000 internally displaced, the UN said.
Attacks have targeted mostly the north and east of the country, although the capital Ouagadougou has been hit three times.
Prior to Tuesday’s attack, Burkinabe security forces said that they had since last month killed about 100 militants in several operations.
Attacks have intensified this year as the underequipped, poorly trained army struggles to contain the Islamist militancy.
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