Dozens Killed in Terrorist Attack Northern Burkina Faso

Hours ago, terrorist militants in Burkina Faso killed 35 civilians, mostly women after attacking a military outpost in northern Soum province.

Authorities explained that that the attack took place in the town of Arbinda near the country’s border with Mali, lasted for several hours.

A military statement acknowledges that seven members of the security forces who responded died, while 80 insurgents were reported killed.

It was revealed that 31 among the civilian victims were women, and so far it is not clear where they were at the time of the attack or why so many died.

On his part, President Roch Marc Kaboré declared two days of national mourning in the west African country in response to the attack.

“The heroic action of our soldiers has made it possible to neutralise 80 terrorists,” he said. “This barbaric attack resulted in the death of 35 civilians, most of them women.”

Burkina Faso has been witnessing a wave of militant extremism, which is already the case in neighbouring Sahel countries, where it took a 2013 French-led military intervention to dislodge extremists from power in several major towns.

Extremism has been rocking western Africa Sahel region for some time now, as seven years after the outbreak of the conflict in Mali, violent extremism has spread across the region, together with community conflicts over the access to natural resources and inter-ethnic violence. Trans-border activities of non-state armed actors – insurgents, jihadist groups and ethnic-based militias – as well as illicit trafficking networks feed the regional insecurity.

In Burkina  Faso, a pair of deadly attacks took place in 2016 and 2017 in the capital of Ouagadougou, both of which targeted spots popular with foreigners.

According to the United Nations, frequent attacks in the country’s north and east have already displaced more than a half million people .

While Burkina Faso’s military has received training from both France and the United States, it has so far failed to stem the surge in extremist violence.