Unidentified armed men killed five police officers in an attack on security forces in northern Burkina Faso in the early hours of Sunday, in which around 15 of the attackers died, the security ministry said in a statement.
The incident occurred in Sourou province in the borderlands near Mali, where Islamist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have increased attacks in recent years despite international efforts to stamp them out.
The attackers struck at 5 a.m. and around 15 of them were killed in the ensuing fight, the ministry said.
Islamist attacks have surged across Africa’s Sahel region, killing thousands and driving millions from their homes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. About 1.2 million people have been displaced by the violence in Burkina Faso alone.
Since 2015, Burkina Faso has struggled to fight back against increasingly frequent and deadly attacks from armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
Such attacks, which have killed at least 1,400 people so far, first started in the north near the country’s border with Mali, but have since spread to other regions, particularly in the east, sparking a major humanitarian crisis.
In early June, the northern village of Solhan was hit by the deadliest attack since the start of the conflict, with at least 138 people killed. Local sources have put the death toll at 160. The massacre prompted a mass exodus of more than 7,000 families searching for more secure places.
Since 2019, violence in the country has forced more than 1.2 million people – about one in 20 in the population – to flee their homes, according to figures by the United Nations’ refugee agency.
