47 people killed in Burkina Faso after a jihadist attack on a convoy of civilians

Women and children queue to collect water in the Barsalogho IDP camp in Burkina Faso in March 2020. Juan Luis Rod

Armed men attacked a convoy of civilians under military escort in northern Burkina Faso on Wednesday, killing 47 people, according to the Burkina Faso Ministry of Communication. Among those killed are 30 civilians, 14 soldiers and three members of the paramilitary group Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), created at the behest of the Government. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but this area is the usual scene of action for jihadist factions belonging to both Al Qaeda and the self-styled Islamic State.

The attack occurred about 25 kilometers from Gorgadji, in the northern Sahel region, as the convoy was heading from Dori to Arbinda, in a large area known as The Three Borders because of its proximity to Mali and Niger.

The military tried to offer resistance and managed to kill 58 suspected jihadists.

Another 19 people were injured in the violent incident.

More information

• Jihadist terrorism takes hold in Burkina Faso

• "Jihadist terrorism threatens to spread throughout Africa"

This is the third major attack in this area so far this month. The first occurred on August 4 near the border with Niger when 30 people were killed, including 19 military personnel and 11 civilians. Just five days later, a new terrorist attack resulted in the death of 12 soldiers, this time in a place close to the border with Mali. So far this year, some 850 people have been killed in Burkina Faso by jihadist violence, mostly civilians, according to figures from the NGO Acled, and there are 1.3 million people displaced from their homes within the country itself.

The growing unease over the intensification of jihadist violence in recent months caused the outbreak of protests and demonstrations last June both in the north of the country and in its central region, but the Government does not seem capable of curbing a phenomenon in frank growth. The recourse of the VDP, young people without military training who are used to ensure order in places where the security forces are in retreat or absent, has not yielded the expected results.

The entire central Sahel area, which in addition to northern Burkina Faso includes central Mali and western Niger, is plunged into a spiral of violence caused by the presence of jihadist groups that increasingly focus on the civilian population .

Last Monday, alleged members of the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara (EIGS) murdered 37 peasants while working in their fields in a town in the Nigerien region of Tillabéri, raising the number of deaths to 450 since the beginning of the year.

Also, on August 8, an attack near Menaka, in Mali, killed 42 people and caused a massive population exodus.

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Since jihadist groups took control of two-thirds of Mali in 2012, terrorist violence has continued to spread throughout the region. The military response led by France managed to regain control of the large cities, especially Gao and Timbuktu, but it has not been able to eliminate these groups that rely on poverty, the weak state presence in areas far from the political center of each country and inter-community disputes to gain weight and recruit militiamen. Operation Barkhane, which includes the presence of some 5,500 French soldiers in the region, is scheduled to end this year, which will mean a significant reduction in the number of military personnel from that European country in the Sahel.

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