twenty civilians killed in two attacks attributed to jihadists

New attacks in Burkina Faso. Twenty civilians, including women and children, were killed between Monday and Wednesday in two attacks by suspected jihadists in central-eastern Burkina Faso, security and local sources said on Friday May 19. During these two attacks, carried out in Sangha and Kaongo, in the province of Koulpélogo, “houses and shops were set on fire by the assailants who also carried off livestock”according to a local official.

Residents of Sangha commune confirmed both attacks, saying the “desperate populations are trying to flee their localities, fearing new attacks”. According to these residents, armed groups summoned the population of Soudougui, another town in the province, “to empty several villages under penalty of reprisals in the following days”.

Burkina, 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 killed more than 10,000 civilians and soldiers, according to NGOs, and more than two million internally displaced persons.