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At least 20 people have been killed in a series of attacks on villages in the restive north of Burkina Faso, security sources and local residents told AFP on Friday.
Gunmen attacked three villages early Thursday in the country’s northern Yatenga province.
“Yesterday at around 5 am (local and GMT), armed groups attacked the villages of Pelle, Zanna and Nongfaire”, a local resident said on Friday, giving a toll of 25 people died.
There were “many others injured”, the resident said.
Another resident said that “the killers who came on motorbikes were chased by volunteers (civilian auxiliaries of the army) and soldiers”.
The attack was confirmed by a security source, who put the dead at “twenties” adding that search operations were carried out to find the killers.
The attackers “were hit by air support after taking refuge in the Barga forest. Many of them died,” another security source said.
Burkina Faso, which saw two military coups in 2022, is battling a jihadist insurgency that crossed over from Mali in 2015.
Captain Ibrahim Traore, the transitional president of Burkina after carrying out the latest coup on September 30, has set a goal of recapturing 40 percent of the country’s territory controlled by jihadists affiliated with Al -Qaeda and the Islamic State group.
The violence has seen more than 10,000 dead — both civilians and military — according to NGOs, and displaced an estimated two million people.
Earlier this week, about 20 civilians were killed in two attacks by suspected jihadists 400 kilometers to the south in the Centre-Est region, bordering Togo and Ghana.
(AFP)