Jihadist raid on Burkina Faso village leaves at least 10 dead

At least 10 men have been killed in a major jihadist attack on a village in Burkina Faso, which is in the grip of a bloody Islamist insurgency, security and local sources told AFP on Tuesday.

“We are talking of between 10 and 30 dead” in in the assault, which targeted the village of Silgadji in northern Soum province, said one of the sources, a security official.

The attack was launched on Saturday and jihadists were still in the area on Monday, a local resident in nearby Bourzanga town told AFP by phone, citing accounts from those who had fled.

“The terrorists surrounded the people at the village market, before separating them into two groups. The men were executed and the women were ordered to leave the village,” the source said.

The security source said: “Security teams are trying to get to the site but access to the village has probably been booby-trapped with homemade mines, and they are having to proceed carefully.”

Jihadist groups have killed almost 800 people in Burkina Faso and displaced 600,000 more since the start of 2015 when extremist violence began to spread from neighbouring Mali.

The Sahel country is one of the most impoverished in the world.

Its army is ill-equipped and poorly trained to deal with the threat although in recent months commanders claim to have killed roughly 100 jihadists.

There are 4,500 French troops deployed in the region, as well as a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali, backing the forces of the “G5 Sahel” anti-terror group — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.