No fewer than nineteen people, including nine volunteers with the armed forces, were part of those killed in two attacks in jihadist-torn Burkina Faso, local inhabitants, and a security source revealed on Monday.
Africa Today News, New York reports that about seven members of the VDP volunteer force were murdered in a mass attack on Thursday in the northwestern village of Dembo, a senior official with the militia told reporters.
On Sunday, a ‘terrorist group’ killed 12 people, including two VDP members, at Yargatenga, a village near the eastern border with Togo and Ghana, local sources said.
‘This is the third time that Yargatenga has been targeted in a month,’ a local official said, saying the town’s commissioner had been killed in an ambush on February 1.
The attack in Dembo was carried out by ‘around 100 armed men who surged into the village in pickups and on motorcycles, opening fire before taking on the VDP,’ an official with the volunteer force told reporters.
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‘We lost seven members in the fighting, which lasted more than three hours. Several attackers were also killed but their bodies were taken away’ by the assailants, he said.
He stated that despite a military force travelling from Nouna, some 15 kilometres (9 miles) distant, on Friday morning, there was a petrol shortage, making it impossible for VDP forces to pursue the assailants.
One local informed reporters that ‘terrorists’ had visited Dembo numerous times since the start of the year, ‘but up until now they hadn’t killed anyone,’ and that ‘residents have been packing their bags since the weekend.’
Following the attacks, the number of armed rebel deaths rose to almost 60 for just last week, up from about 50 the week before.
One of the world’s poorest nations, Burkina Faso has been rocked by a jihadist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Thousands have been killed, more than two million people have fled their homes and around 40 percent of the country lies outside the government’s control.
Anger within the military at the mounting toll fuelled two coups last year.