At least 20 people have died in two jihadist-related incidents in Burkina

Security and local sources told AFP on Friday that twenty civilians, including women and children, were killed between Monday and Wednesday in two attacks by suspected jihadists in central-eastern Burkina Faso.

According to a local official who spoke to AFP, on Wednesday, “armed groups carried out an incursion into Bilguimdouré,” a village in the commune of Sangha, in the province of Koulpélogo (center-east), near the borders of Ghana and Togo, “causing a dozen deaths.”

In the adjoining village of Kaongo two days prior, “another terrorist incursion had resulted in the death of at least eleven people, including women and children,” he continued.

The same source claims that during these two raids, “the attackers who also stole livestock set fire to houses and shops.”

Security sources acknowledged the attacks, claiming that “security operations are underway in the region” without providing any information on the outcomes of the invasions.

Asserting that the “desperate populations are trying to flee their localities, fearing new attacks,” Sangha commune residents verified the two attacks with AFP.

These locals claim that armed groups ordered the citizens of Soudougui, another town in the area, to “clear several villages under threat of retaliation in the coming days.”

Despite the army’s and its civilian auxiliary’s anti-jihadist operations, the province of Koulpélogo, where a curfew has been in place for several months, continues to be the target of attacks.

Mid-April saw two attacks by alleged jihadists in the Center-East region, close to the borders of Ghana and Togo, that claimed the lives of at least 24 individuals, 20 of whom were Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), civilian army auxiliary personnel.

Burkina, the location of two military takeovers in 2022, has been caught in a spiral of jihadist warfare that began in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and has since gone beyond their borders since 2015.

According to NGOs, the violence over the previous seven years has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths of military and civilians and more than two million internal displacements.

The Australian government said on Friday that one of its citizens, 88-year-old doctor Kenneth Elliott, had been released seven years after he was arrested.