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A “moving” military patrol fell victim to a “complex” attack on Friday in northern Burkina Faso. According to the latest report communicated Monday evening by the Burkinabè army, at least 51 soldiers lost their lives.
At least 51 soldiers were killed on Friday February 17 in an ambush by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso, where attacks by “terrorist” armed groups have intensified since the beginning of the year.
This ambush in the Sahel region bordering Mali and Niger, the provisional toll of which was announced on Monday February 20 by the army, could prove to be the deadliest ever committed against the security forces since that of November 2021 in Inata. (north): 57 gendarmes were then killed after unsuccessfully appealing for help.
Monday evening, “43 new bodies were found, establishing the provisional balance sheet at 51 fallen soldiers”, indicates the Burkinabè army in a press release. She had given Monday morning a toll of eight soldiers killed.
The army affirms that “the operations continue with an intensification of the aerial actions which made it possible to neutralize a hundred terrorists and to destroy their materials. This figure is added to the sixty terrorists neutralized since the beginning of the response.”
The army staff “invites all of the National Armed Forces to maintain the mobilization which has enabled us to achieve important victories in recent weeks”, according to the press release. The staff also calls “the populations to the sacred union around the Defense and Security Forces in these difficult times. It is together that we will defeat terrorism.”
“Complex” attack
A “moving” military patrol was the victim of a “complex” attack on Friday between Deou and Oursi (Oudalan province) in the Sahel region, the army said on Saturday without giving an assessment. She added that “intense fighting” had pitted the members of the military unit against “an armed terrorist group”.
Deadly raids attributed to jihadists have multiplied in recent weeks in Burkina. With Friday’s attack, nearly 200 – civilians and military – have died in the past two, according to an AFP tally.
Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in 2022, has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of jihadist violence that appeared in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and which has spread beyond their borders. The violence has claimed more than 10,000 lives over the past seven years – civilians and soldiers – according to NGOs, and some two million displaced.
With AFP