At least 31 Burkinabe soldiers and three allied volunteer militiamen (VDP) have been killed in an attack by suspected jihadists in the country’s north, security sources said Tuesday. Dozens were also killed in a separate attack on Monday, the latest in one of the world’s poorest countries as it struggles with a jihadist insurgency that swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015. In the first attack, a supply convoy escorted by military units that was returning from Djibo, a town besieged for months by insurgents in the northern Sahel region, “was the target of an ambush”, the military said. It said “more than 40 terrorists were neutralised” in the fighting, while around a dozen soldiers were still missing after the “particularly violent” clash.
Nearly a third of Burkina Faso lies outside state control, according to the government, which in response to the spiralling security crisis formed the Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland (VDP) — civilian volunteers who are given two weeks’ military training. They work alongside the army, typically carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties. The army did not comment on the other attack reported in the same region on Monday.
“Terrorist groups attacked the village of Noaka” in the north-central region, “mainly targeting the VDP,” a security source said. “Unfortunately, we have recorded several dozen dead, soldiers and volunteers,” the source added, a report confirmed by a local VDP official. “We lost dozens of men in Noaka and several are wounded… Several other fighters are still missing,” he told AFP.
‘A massacre’
“It was a massacre that took place in Noaka,” one resident said, adding that around 30 VDP fighters had been killed in the attack alone. “The valiant fighters, backed by the army, also inflicted a heavy loss on the attackers,” he said, adding that “several motorcycles and weapons were recovered”. More than 10,000 civilians, troops and police have died since the start of the jihadist attacks, according to an NGO count, and at least two million people have been displaced.
Anger within the military at failures to roll back the insurgency sparked two coups in Burkina Faso last year. “The response of the forces allowed us to neutralise about 40 terrorists. Security operations and sweeps are underway in these areas,” another security source said of the latest attacks. The local VDP official also said that a smaller attack took place on Monday in Gayeri, in the eastern province of Komondjari, killing four members of the volunteer force.
Residents of the eastern town of Tanwalbougou had protested the same day against the upsurge in jihadist attacks, calling for supplies for their town, which has been blockaded by armed groups for several weeks.
