According to locals and security officials, attacks over the weekend in northern and eastern Burkina Faso claimed the lives of two troops and six civilians.
Two members of the security forces were killed and five others were injured by a highway bomb on Saturday in Bouroum, in northern Burkina.
In a separate attack, gunmen attacked a bus in a village called Kokode near the border with Ghana, another security source said. “Six civilians were killed by the attackers, who also robbed the bus passengers,” the source said.
The toll was confirmed by a member of a regional traders´ association, who said that an “important business figure” was among the dead. A poor landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel, Burkina Faso is battling a seven-year insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven around two million people from their homes.
Burkina Faso, a poor landlocked nation in the Sahel, has been fighting a seven-year insurgency by insurgents that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced about two million people from their homes.
Disgruntled officers have staged two coups this year, the most recent of which occurred on September 30.
Captain Ibrahim Traore, the new strongman, has vowed to retake land that the rebels have taken, and he has started a recruitment drive to build a volunteer militia.
The army claims that between December 1 and December 10, an anti-insurgency operation in the northwest resulted in the deaths of 39 “terrorists.”