Ouagadougou, Jan. 31 (BNA): A regional governor and the army said in separate statements that at least 28 people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed in two attacks launched by gunmen on Sunday and Monday in Burkina Faso.
The army said that a combat unit in Valangoto, in the north of the country, near its border with Niger, was attacked and killed 10 soldiers, volunteer fighters and a civilian.
The army said the bodies of 15 attackers were found after the attack.
In a separate statement on Monday, Colonel Jean-Charles Det Yanabono Somme, governor of the country’s Cascades region in the south near the border with Ivory Coast, said the bodies of 15 men, all civilians, were found following Sunday’s attack.
The governor said that armed men stopped two vehicles carrying eight women and 16 men. He said that the woman and one man were released.
“On January 30, the bodies of the victims, showing traces of bullets, were found near Lengikoro village,” the governor said in the statement.
The West African country of the Sahel and its neighbors Mali and Niger are fighting militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
The militants occupied territory in the country’s arid and mainly rural north, executing hundreds of villagers and displacing nearly two million others. They besieged towns and villages, exacerbating the food crisis.
Insecurity due to militant attacks contributed to political instability and two military coups in the country in January and September 2022.
The militants’ attacks have spread to the south, where they have also launched cross-border raids in coastal states including Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo.