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30 civilians killed in the same region of Burkina Faso where the Spanish journalists were killed

2021-05-04T00:39:41.009Z


Armed men set fire to the houses of a town while its inhabitants slept and shoot those who tried to flee


Burkina Faso security forces patrol in Ouagadougou, capital of the country, in September 2015 SIA KAMBOU / AFP

Dozens of armed men murdered some 30 civilians early Monday in a town in Burkina Faso, in the same eastern region where Spanish journalists David Beriain and Roberto Fraile and Irish conservationist Rory Young were murdered last week. Another 20 people were injured. The events occurred around five in the morning, local time, when the attackers, allegedly members of a jihadist group, surrounded the town of Kodyèl, located in the province of Komondjari, and began to burn the houses one by one while its inhabitants slept. , according to Burkina Faso security sources. As they came out they were shot. Hundreds of people have fled to the nearby town of Foutouri.

It is one of the worst massacres to have occurred in Burkina Faso since the terrorist attacks in this African country began in 2015.

The same security sources assure that members of this community, mostly belonging to the Gourmantché ethnic group, had enlisted in the group of Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), the paramilitary body created by the Burkinabe government to fight against the advance of jihadism, so the attack could be an act of revenge committed by the radicals.

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Local informants assured Agence France Press that there were "several dozen deaths" and a regional official of the VDP estimated the death toll at 30, both men and women. "It is a provisional balance because many people fled the town, among the twenty wounded several were serious," he assured AFP. This same source lamented that the massacre could have been prevented. “For days we have been issuing warnings about the presence of terrorists in the area. Some individuals had threatened the villagers, whom they accuse of denouncing them or defending the volunteers who fight them, ”he added.

Jihadism and the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces, self-defense groups and paramilitaries have caused more than 5,000 deaths in Burkina Faso since the violence penetrated the country from neighboring Mali in 2015, according to data from the NGO Acled. The years with the most deaths were 2019 and 2020. Large areas of the country, where there are already 1.1 million internally displaced persons fleeing insecurity, are beyond the control of the Army and the Police. In the North, Central-North and East regions, the security forces have withdrawn towards the cities and jihadist cells, especially belonging to the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM, for its acronym in Arabic) and the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara (EIGS) campaign with little opposition.

On the other hand, 16 soldiers of the Niger Army were killed this Saturday and one more is missing after they suffered an ambush carried out by armed men in the Tillia area, near the border with Mali, in the Tahoua region, as reported this Sunday through public television Ibrahim Miko, secretary general of the governor of this region. The attack took place around 1:00 p.m. local time in the same area where on March 21 armed men, supposedly linked to a jihadist group, murdered 141 people in different incidents, according to a balance sheet by the Nigerian government.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-05-04

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