(Ouagadougou) At least 70 Burkinabè soldiers died in four days in two attacks in the north, near Mali, which confirm the resurgence of jihadist violence in Burkina Faso since the beginning of the year.
The deadly raids attributed to jihadist groups have killed more than 200 civilians and soldiers in Burkina since the beginning of January.
Monday evening, at least fifteen soldiers were killed in the province of Oudalan in the far north of the country, a few kilometers from the Malian border, according to security sources.
“The Tin-Akoff detachment was the target of a violent attack”, indicated a first source, evoking a balance sheet of “fifteen deaths” and “elements which are missing”.
The balance sheet could increase: a second security source put forward a balance sheet of 19 dead and “dozens of missing”.
According to the first source, the air and ground response of the Burkinabè army made it possible to “neutralize” “dozens of terrorists”.
And the operations continue, according to this source, “concentrated in the province of Oudalan which has experienced a resurgence of violence in recent days”.
It is in this province, near Déou, that at least 51 soldiers were killed Friday in an ambush, a still provisional assessment, according to the army.
This is the deadliest attack since Captain Ibrahim Traoré came to power, during a putsch at the end of September 2022: it is also the one that has caused the most deaths in the army since November 2021.
At the time, 57 gendarmes had been killed after unsuccessfully appealing for help.
This attack had then caused deep trauma within the armed forces and public opinion and had occurred shortly before the first coup d’etat of January 2022 which overthrew the president-designate Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, accused of “incapacity in the face of the jihadists.
In a reaction on Tuesday to the ambush of Deou, Captain Traoré affirmed that in this “combat strewn with pitfalls”, the “patriotic outburst” and the “determination” of the authorities remained “intact until the final victory” against jihadist groups.
According to the army, the response to this attack on Friday killed 160 jihadists.
“First real test”
The head of the junta can count on the support of several political parties and civil society organizations.
“In these difficult times, I urge all Burkinabè to cultivate the spirit of national unity, and to support the authorities of the transition, in their determination to restore our territorial integrity”, declared in a press release Zéphirin Diabré, president of the Union for Change (UPC) and former minister of President Kaboré.
“In these difficult times”, the National Youth Council of Burkina Faso (CNJ-BF), a civil society organization close to the junta, invited in a press release “all young people to a national and sacred union around” the armed forces, their civilian auxiliaries and the authorities “in their determination to restore our territorial integrity”.
The country, 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 over the past seven years has left more than 10,000 dead – civilians and soldiers – according to NGOs, and some two million displaced.
Shortly after taking power, Captain Traoré set himself the goal of “reclaiming” some 40% of Burkinabe territory controlled by jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
But since then, the attacks attributed to them have only increased and Friday’s ambush is “Captain Traoré’s first real test”, headline Tuesday The Paalga Observeran influential independent daily.
His heavy balance sheet calls out. “How can we understand that seven years later, despite the modus operandi known to all, our combat forces are still falling into ambushes of this kind? asks political analyst Harouna Traoré.
Anxious to regain their “sovereignty” in the fight against jihadists, the Burkina authorities last month asked the French Saber force, made up of 400 special forces soldiers, to leave the country.
The deadliest attack ever committed in the country remains to date that of Solhan (north) in June 2021, which had killed 130 to 160 civilians, according to the reports.