More than 237,000 people have been forced to abandon their homes in the past six months in Burkina Faso, a country facing deadly jihadist attacks, bringing the total number of displaced to more than 1.3 million, the government has announced.  A government spokesman reporting the new numbers Wednesday said that the majority of the displaced people — some 60 percent — are children, while women make up a further 23 percent.

“237,078 internally displaced persons were registered in the first half of 2021, increasing the number of internally displaced persons from 1,074,993 as of December 31, 2020 to 1,312,071 as of June 30, 2021,” said Ousseni Tamboura.  Tamboura was speaking after the government studied a report on the humanitarian situation in the poor west African nation, which has a total population of more than 20 million, according to UN estimates.

According to the National Council for Emergency Relief (CONASUR), 271 municipal areas have been impacted, mostly in the centre, north and east of the country, the regions most affected by the attacks.   “Faced with this situation, a distribution of 30,000 tonnes of cereals has been carried out since March 31, managing to reach about 848,925 people, including more than 400,000 displaced persons and other groups of vulnerable people, particularly victims of natural disasters,” Tamboura said.

Burkina Faso, a landlocked and partly arid Sahel nation, has since 2015 been confronted with increasingly frequent and deadly attacks by forces including the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (affiliated with Al-Qaeda) and the Islamic State in the Great Sahara. Security forces are struggling to stem the spiral of jihadist violence which has killed more than 1,500 people since 2015.