Two attacks perpetrated on the same day killed more than thirty people in Burkina Faso. Fifteen kidnapped civilians were found dead Monday in the west and a dozen members of the security forces were killed in the north. The violence of suspected jihadists is intensifying in this West African country, which intends to fight them mainly alone.
The deadly actions of groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State began in 2015, but have steadily increased in recent months and are partly behind two coups in Burkina in 2022 .
Two minibuses intercepted
On Monday, it was in the south-west of the country, near Côte d’Ivoire, that fifteen people were found dead after being kidnapped the day before by suspected jihadists. Sunday evening, two minibuses had been intercepted in the village of Linguekoro by armed men, according to the governor of the region, Colonel Jean-Charles Somé.
The passengers, eight men and 16 women, “were disembarked” from the vehicles, he said in a statement. Among them, “eight women and a man were released and ordered to walk back to Mangodara”, 30 kilometers from Linguekoro. The two minibuses “were subsequently set on fire and the other passengers kidnapped”, according to the governor. The bodies of the victims found on Monday show “bullet impacts”, according to him.