March 25, 2020 – Two soldiers in Mali and three civilians in Burkina Faso died in suspected jihadist attacks in the Sahel on Tuesday, a day after Islamist rebels killed scores of troops in Chad, security sources said. The two soldiers were killed and three others were wounded by a bomb placed on a road between Baye and Pissa in the central region of Mopti, the Malian army said on social media Wednesday.
Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that erupted in the north in 2012, and which has claimed thousands of military and civilian lives since. Defying help from French and UN troops, the conflict in Mali has engulfed the centre of the country and spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Around 4,000 people died in the three countries last year, according to UN figures. Jihadist violence is also often intertwined with ethnic disputes.
In Burkina Faso, meanwhile, a security source said three civilians died in a “terrorist attack” in Tankwoarou in the east of the country on Tuesday. The assailants, who arrived aboard motorbikes, killed the village leader, a trader and the former mayor of the town of Foutouri, who lived there. The attacks came a day after jihadists from the Nigerian-based Boko Haram organisation killed 92 soldiers at a base in Chad, inflicting the country’s biggest one-day military losses. The seven-hour assault in Boma, in Lac province, is part of an expanding jihadist campaign in the vast, marshy Lake Chad area, where the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge. Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009 before beginning incursions in its neighbouring countries to the east.
