(Paris) About sixty jihadists were killed in northern Burkina Faso during an operation by Burkinabè forces, assisted by French units from Operation Barkhane, shortly before the January 24 coup in which the President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré has been overthrown, the French army announced on Sunday.
Posted yesterday at 3:47 p.m.
“On four occasions, between January 16 and 23, 2022, different groups of terrorists were located, identified and neutralized by Burkinabè forces and by Barkhane units”, we learned from the general staff. . “In total, nearly sixty terrorists were put out of action,” according to the French army staff.
Twenty motorcycles and several armed vans were also destroyed in these operations punctuated by “air strikes by the Barkhane force, guided by Burkinabè units”, explains the general staff of the armies in a press release.
“The objective was to seek out terrorists in their refuge areas”, commented the French general staff, before adding that “the results are very, very good”.
“We are continuing the fight against terrorists in coordination with our partners, the Burkinabè armed forces, which carried out these operations” with a “very positive” outcome, we continued.
According to the army, the Burkinabè forces will thus be able to “return” to these “transit and refuge areas” for jihadist groups in which “they had not operated for a long time”.
These military successes came just before a military coup on January 24, during which President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was placed under house arrest and other officials arrested.
Thursday evening, in his first speech since taking power on Monday, Burkina’s new strongman, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, declared on national television that his country needed its partners “more than ever”. .
Saying that he understood the “legitimate doubts” aroused by the coup d’etat, he assured that Burkina “(would continue) to respect international commitments, in particular with regard to respect for human rights”, and specified that the he independence of justice would also be “assured”.
The population criticized Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in particular for not having succeeded in stemming the deterioration in security since 2015, particularly in the north and east of the country.
In the wake of Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso is caught in a spiral of violence attributed to armed jihadist groups, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which have killed more than 2,000 people and forced at least 1, 5 million people to flee their homes.