Suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso have killed four soldiers and nine civilian auxiliaries, the army said on Friday. The attack on Thursday by “an armed terrorist group” in Bourzanga district also wounded 10 others, military headquarters said in a statement. “At least 34 terrorists” were killed, it said. Security sources and an official with the auxiliary VDP militia had earlier reported simultaneous attacks in Bourzanga, and given a death toll of three soldiers and nine auxiliaries.
The landlocked Sahel state is wrestling with a seven-year-old jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven some two million people from their homes. More than 40 percent of the country is no longer under government control, according to official figures. Colonels staged a coup in January and have vowed to restore security. But after a lull, attacks resumed and have escalated in recent months. On June 11, 86 people were massacred at Seytenga in the northwest, in one of the bloodiest acts of the long-running insurgency. Thirty-four villagers were killed on July 2 and 3 in the north and northwest.
The VDP — Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland — has borne the brunt of attacks on the security forces. The force, set up in December 2019, comprises civilian volunteers who are given two weeks’ military training and then work alongside the army, typically carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties. A VDP source said that in the latest attack in Bourzanga district, six militiamen were killed in the village of Alga and three in Boulounga, while “several attackers were also killed.”
The Seytenga attack prompted the authorities to set up two “zones of military interest” in the worst-hit regions of the north and east. The idea is to have zones that are banned for civilians, giving the armed forces freer range to attack jihadists. But on Wednesday, the army admitted that civilians had been killed during an air strike in the east. It gave no toll, but local inhabitants told AFP that about 30 people, most of them women who had gone to attend ceremonies to inaugurate a mill, had died.
