OUAGADOUGOU - At least 53 soldiers and militia fighters have been killed in a suspected terrorist attack in Burkina Faso, the latest in a growing wave of instability in West Africa, after a succession of military coups.
All but 17 of the dead were militia volunteers, with the rest professional soldiers. The force had been deployed to assist civilians who’d already been displaced by the terrorists.
The violence was reported in Koumbri in Yatenga province in the north of the country.
About 30 members of the security forces were injured, the army said. It claimed that several attackers had been “neutralised” in a counter-operation and their combat equipment destroyed. Operations are still under way in the area, it added.
Regional group the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) condemned the attack.
The West African bloc said it had learnt “with shock” about the death of the soldiers and civilian volunteers, condemning the “terrorist attacks” expressing its “solidarity with the Burkinabe people”.
War between the government and Islamist rebels has raged in Burkina Faso for eight years, displacing as many as two million people. Insurgents, including the Al Qaeda-linked Boko Haram, known for committing atrocities in Nigeria, were also operating in Mali, to the north of Burkina Faso.
That sparked a joint French-Malian and Burkinabe operation to stamp out the armed groups, but French advisory forces have since been expelled from both countries, following coups in 2021 in Mali and Burkina Faso last year.
The military takeovers were boosted by rampant unemployment and economic decline in both countries, and growing distrust of France, a former colonial power in West Africa.
In Niger, which has also been gripped by terrorist insurgency, similar anti-French sentiment and economic woes also boosted the armed takeover in July.
The new regime in power there is expecting to expel French forces shortly, who’d also been present in a counter-terrorism assistance mission. The Niger crisis prompted a threat by West African security and economic bloc Ecowas, currently led by Nigeria, to intervene militarily if the democratically elected government of Mohamed Bazoum was not restored.
Burkina Faso and Mali both threatened to back Niger if such an intervention happened, and diplomatic talks are continuing to resolve the standoff.
