In a country under high tension, jihadists continue to cause many injuries and deaths. Four French soldiers were injured in Burkina Faso when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded as their vehicle passed by in the north of the country, the French general staff announced on Tuesday evening.
“The all-terrain vehicle exploded on an IED at the exit of Ouahigouya airport”, it was indicated to the staff, specifying that it was a “Barkhane unit in reconnaissance mission. Four soldiers were injured, one seriously. “They were immediately evacuated to Gao”, in Mali. “Those who deserve it will be evacuated to France”, we continued from the same source, without further details on their state of health.
The area is rather frequented by jihadists from the GSIM (or JNIM, a jihadist nebula affiliated with Al-Qaeda). But “it’s a transit zone, we have no certainty” regarding the origin of the machine, said the same source. The Sahel is also the prey of the jihadists of the EIGS, linked to the Islamic State group.
2,000 deaths in six years
The Barkhane anti-jihadist force, which has been present in Mali since 2014 and whose mission is extended to the Sahel, is at the heart of major bilateral political issues, once morest the backdrop of accusations that Mali has used the services of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, as well as the reorganization of the French military presence in the country.
Last week, the junta in power in Bamako since the August 2020 putsch closed its borders to the States of the Organization of West African States (Cédéao), following the latter had done the same to sanction the project of the soldiers to stay in power for several years without an election.
Like its neighbors Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has also been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to armed jihadist groups, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. The army is struggling to contain the violence that has killed more than 2,000 people in six years, and forced more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes.
At least a dozen civilians were killed on Saturday in an attack in northern Burkina Faso, security and local sources said on Sunday.
