OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AFP) – At least nine civilians have been killed in violent attacks in northern Burkina Faso, witnesses told AFP on Wednesday.
The poor, landlocked country in the heart of West Africa’s Sahel is struggling with a jihadist insurgency now in its eighth year.
Thousands of civilians, police and security volunteers have died and some two million people have fled their homes.
One resident near Kongoussi, the capital of Bam province, told AFP on condition of anonymity that assailants on motorbikes had opened fire on villagers nearby.
Five were killed and two injured, the source said, adding that people had started to flee their homes and head 10 kilometers (six miles) north towards Kongoussi for safety.
Another resident told AFP that seven people were killed in the same attack.
The violence followed an attack Monday on a convoy of traders that killed four people, witnesses said.
AFP was unable to independently verify casualty figures, although a security source confirmed the attacks without giving details.
“Operations are underway in these areas and others,” the source said.
Swathes of the country are no longer under government control and turbulence in the military over the crisis has triggered two coups this year.
The decade-long jihadist campaign in the Sahel has ignited fears of an advance towards vulnerable countries on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea — Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo.
On Sunday six civilians, four of them teachers, were killed in a suspected jihadist attack in southern Burkina Faso in the town of Bittou, close to the border with Ghana, according to security officials.
© Agence France-Presse