Burkina: three members of the security forces killed in an attack

At least three members of the security forces were killed on Saturday in an attack in northern Burkina Faso, plagued by recurrent jihadist violence, we learned from security and local sources.

" A team made up of gendarmes and police officers fell into an ambush carried out this morning by unidentified armed individuals, near Barsalogho ", a region which is home to thousands of internally displaced persons, who fled the jihadist attacks, told the AFP a safe source. " The provisional report shows three elements dead and four injured, " said the same source, speaking on condition of anonymity. " Reinforcements have been deployed from Barsalogho and are sweeping the area ".

" We deplore three deaths ", confirmed a local source, joined to Barsalogho by AFP. According to the same source, “ the ambush took place on the Barsalogho-Foubé axis ”, where an attack on a humanitarian convoy had left fifteen dead, including five gendarmes, at the end of May.

The north of Burkina Faso is the most affected area of ​​the country by jihadist abuses which have left more than 1,100 dead and more than a million internally displaced for five years.

Under-equipped and poorly trained, the security forces of Burkina, a poor country in West Africa, are unable to stem the spiral of jihadist violence, despite the help of foreign forces, in particular France , present in the Sahel with 5,100 men as part of the anti-jihadist operation Barkhane.

Jihadist violence, mixed with inter-community conflicts, which affects the center of the Sahel, killed a total of 4,000 people in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in 2019, according to the UN.