OUAGADOUGOU: Suspected militants in Burkina Faso have killed sixteen civilians including four army auxiliaries, while around twelve militants also died later in an army counter-offensive.
12 people died and two were wounded in Koulponsgo, in central-eastern Burkina on Tuesday, a resident said. A security source confirmed both the attack and toll, Western media reported.
On the same day, an attack by terrorist groups left 4 dead in Sirasso in the west, which were VDP civilian volunteers for the army.
The VDP, or Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland, is a civilian force that backs the army in the fight against the militants.
Burkina Faso is fighting a militant insurgency that swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
The latest violence follows an attack last week on a camp for internally displaced people in the north of Burkina Faso which left 8 people dead.
Violence in Burkina Faso
More than seventeen thousand civilians and troops have died in terrorist attacks in the country, according to an NGO monitor called the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
More than 2 million people have also been uprooted, making it one of the worst internal displacement crises in Africa.
Anger within the Burkinabe armed forces resulted in a coup in January last year, toppling elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore.
On 30 September, Kabore’s nemesis, Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, was himself overthrown in another putsch.
On Wednesday, the government claimed that at least 192,000 internally displaced people had returned to their homes after different regions were retaken by government forces.
Terrorist attacks continue unabated despite government claims to have snatched back territory.
The situation has been exacerbated after Burkina’s ex-colonial ruler France withdrew forces in January following tensions with the ruling junta.
Burkina has since established closer links with Russia, an ally of the junta in neighbouring Mali.
