At the very least 15 civilians had been killed and two others injured throughout a “terrorist” assault on a Catholic church throughout Sunday mass in northern Burkina Faso, a senior church official mentioned.
“We deliver to your consideration a terrorist assault which the Catholic group of Essakane village was the sufferer of right this moment, February 25, whereas they had been gathered for Sunday prayer,” the vicar of the Dori diocese, Jean-Pierre Sawadogo, mentioned in a press release despatched to AFP.
The provisional toll was 15 killed and two wounded, he added.
Calling for peace and safety in Burkina Faso, Sawadogo denounced “those that proceed to wreak loss of life and desolation in our nation”.
Essakane village, the place the assault befell, is in what is called the “three borders” zone within the northeast of the nation, close to the widespread borders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
That is simply the most recent in a sequence of atrocities blamed on jihadist teams lively within the area, a few of which have focused Christian church buildings whereas others have concerned the kidnapping of clergy.
Burkina Faso is a part of the huge Sahel area, which has been locked in a battle towards rising violent extremism since Libya’s civil struggle in 2011, adopted by an Islamist takeover of northern Mali in 2012.
The jihadist insurgency spilled over into Burkina Faso and Niger from 2015.
When Captain Ibrahim Traore seized energy in 2022, it was the nation’s second coup in lower than a yr — each triggered partially by discontent on the authorities’s failures to quell the jihadist violence.
Round 20,000 individuals in Burkina Faso have been killed in that violence, whereas over two million have been displaced.
