Burkina Faso security forces eliminated dozens of terrorists in border sweep

Burkina Faso’s government said Tuesday it had killed dozens of “terrorists” and arrested hundreds of suspects in joint operations along its borders with neighbouring Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo last week.

From 21 – 27 November, a total of almost 6 000 soldiers from the four countries were deployed against jihadists in a mission dubbed “Goundalgou 4”, Burkinabe security minister Maxime Kone told reporters.

In patrols, lockdowns and searches of specific areas, the troops “arrested 300 suspects, several of them wanted”, as well as seizing 53 firearms, “large quantities of ammunition” and almost 150 vehicles and motorbikes, as well as “significant quantities of narcotics”.

In Burkina itself, Kone said five “terrorist bases” were destroyed and “around 30 terrorists neutralised in clashes” near the border with Ivory Coast.

Burkina mounted three similar operations with its neighbours in 2018-2019, cooperating with only one other country each time “in areas facing the emergence of armed terrorist groups like Boko Haram, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS),” Kone said.

Jihadist attacks have grown increasingly regular and deadly in Burkina Faso since 2015.

At least nine gendarmes and around 10 civilians were killed on 21 November in an attack blamed on jihadists.

A week before, at least 57 people, 53 of them gendarmes, were killed in an attack on a police post in the West African country’s north.

Source: The South Africa