30 Persons Killed In Attacks Across Northern Burkina Faso

An armed group has killed at least 30 people in a series of attacks in villages across northern Burkina Faso. The unidentified assailants struck villages near the town of Markoye around midday on the Wednesday and then attacked security forces responding to the raids later that afternoon, the country’s defence ministry said in a

statement on the Thursday. The victims also included 11 civilians, 15 soldiers and also four 4 members of a government-backed civilian militia and then more than 10 attackers were also killed, the statement also said, adding the military had regained control of the area. On top of the killings, cattle were stolen and properties set

on fire. The ministry said the area where the attacks took place is now in the control of military units and the counteroffensive to find the assailants is ongoing on the ground and in the air. Earlier, a regional official with the volunteer self-defence force (VDP) said the attacks occurred in Burkina’s Sahel administrative region, hitting

the villages of Badnoogo, Bassian, Tokabangou and the Gadba near the Niger border, and the district of Pensa in the centre-north region too. Several bodies were then also recovered, said the member of the VDP, which also fights armed groups alongside the Burkinabe defence and security forces. One VDP member was among the

victims, he added There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Since 2015, Burkina Faso has also struggled to fight back against increasingly frequent and deadly attacks from armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS). Such attacks, which have killed at least 1,400 people, first started in the north too

near the country’s border with Mali, but have also since spread to other regions, and particularly in the east too, sparking a major humanitarian crisis. In early June, the northern village of Solhan was also hit by the deadliest attack since the start of the conflict, with at least 138 people killed.

Local sources put the death toll at 160

The massacre also prompted a mass exodus of more than 7,000 families searching for more secure places. Since the 2019, violence in the country has forced more than 1.2 million people and also about one in 20 in the population to flee their homes, according to figures by the United Nations refugee agency too. Some 150,000 people have also become internally displaced this year alone, the agency said in the early June, adding that 84 percent of them were women and children.