At least 100 killed in terrorist raids on villages in Burkina Faso
06 June, 2021
Roving sets of terrorists killed in least 100 civilians within an overnight attack in a village in northern Burkina Faso, the government said.
The attackers struck at night time on Fri, killing residents of the village of Solhan, burning homes and the marketplace, said the federal government statement, that was released on Saturday. It referred to them as terrorists.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore denounced the strike near the borders with Mali and Niger, where militants associated with Al Qaeda and ISIS have already been targeting civilians and soldiers.
"We should remain united and solid against these obscurantist forces," Mr Kabore explained, condemning the massacre at Solhan as "barbaric" and "despicable".
"The toll, which is still provisional, is about about 100 dead, men and woman of different ages," a reliability source told AFP.
Assailants struck in around 2am against a posture of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Motherland (VDP), a good civilian defence pressure, before attacking homes and undertaking killings, a local source said.
"In addition to the heavy individual toll, the worst recorded to day, homes and the market were set burning," another security supply said, voicing concern that the "still temporary toll of 100 lifeless may increase".
In early stages Saturday, locals told AFP that at least 14 persons had been killed in a raid over another village, Tadaryat.
“The attackers carried off a number of things belonging to the neighborhood persons including motorbikes and livestock,” an area source said.
Burkina Faso, an unhealthy, landlocked region in the center of the Sahel, has been fighting an insurgency associated with ISIS and Al Qaeda.
The VDP was create in December 2019 to greatly help the poorly equipped armed service fight extremist groups.
Tadaryat is the main Markoye commune found in Oudalan province, nearby the border with Mali to the north, and Niger to the east.
Another security source said a armed service convoy and members of the VDP civilian auxiliary had clashed with forces at Katia, on the same zone simply because on Friday, but there have been no casualties.
The same source also described another attack, overnight from Friday to Saturday, against a VDP base.
The VDP volunteers receive two weeks’ military training, then work together with the security forces, typically undertaking surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties. The pressure has suffered a lot more than 200 deaths, regarding to an AFP tally.
Since 2015, Burkina Faso has struggled to fight against increasingly frequent and deadly attacks from extremist teams, including the Group to Support Islam and Muslims and ISIS in the Greater Sahara.
The attacks first were only available in the north close to the Mali border, but have since pass on to additional regions, particularly in the east.
About 1,400 people have died and greater than a million have fled their homes.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
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