A priest who has been missing since Tuesday in Burkina Faso was found dead Thursday in a forest, in the southwest of the country where jihadist groups but also bandits are present, according to security and local sources.
"The lifeless body of the priest was indeed found today (Thursday) in the forest of Toumousseni",
in the Cascades region, said a security source.
The death of Father Rodrigue Sanon of the Notre Dame de Soubaganyedougou parish was confirmed to AFP by a local elected official.
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The circumstances of his disappearance and death remained unclear Thursday evening.
This is the first time that a priest has been found dead in this region of southwestern Burkina Faso, bordering Mali and Côte d'Ivoire and where jihadist groups are rife.
Father Rodrigue Sanon took the road Tuesday morning in Soubaganyedougou to reach Banfora, the regional capital.
But
“he never arrived at his destination,”
Mgr Lucas Kalfa Sanou, Bishop of Banfora, announced the next day in a press release.
The Abbot's car had been found empty on the road.
Search operations had been launched by the security forces as soon as the news of his disappearance was announced.
According to a security source in Ouagadougou contacted by AFP,
"everything suggests that this is an abduction by armed terrorist groups"
, the terminology used by the authorities in the Sahel to define jihadists.
"They probably had to execute their hostage to get rid of the security network
,
"
continued the same source.
Burkina Faso has been the scene of more and more jihadist attacks since 2015, especially in the north and east of the country.
Jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda for some and with the Islamic State (IS) organization for others are rife in the country and the sub-region.
The southwest, bordering Mali and Côte d'Ivoire, at first less affected by the attacks, has gradually become a zone of presence for these jihadist groups.
Jihadist attacks, which also target churches and religious, have left nearly 1,100 dead and more than a million displaced since 2015, in this poor Sahelian country in West Africa.
In mid-August, the grand imam of Djibo and president of the Muslim community of this important northern city, Souaibou Cissé, was found dead three days after his kidnapping by a group of armed individuals who had intercepted the bus in which he was traveling. .
A year earlier, in March 2019, the priest of the same town (Djibo) had also been kidnapped on the Botogui-Djibo axis.
On February 15, 2018, Father César Fernandez, a Spanish missionary, was killed in central Burkina Faso.
