OUAGADOUGOU, Bukina Faso
Thirty-six civilians were killed in Burkina Faso on Monday
in what the government called a terrorist attack on a market in Sanmatenga
province.
Armed
militants forced their way into the market of the village of Alamou and
attacked people there before burning the structure to the ground, the
government said in a statement on Tuesday.
The
bloodshed is part of a surge in violence in the West African country that has
killed hundreds, forced nearly a million from their homes and made much of the
north ungovernable over the past two years.
“These
repeated attacks on innocent civilians call for real cooperation between
defense and security forces,” the government said.
President
Roch Marc Kabore called for two days of national mourning in response to the
attack. It was not immediately clear who was responsible.
Islamist groups with
links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have carried out increasingly brazen
attacks against civilian and military targets in Burkina Faso in recent months,
including an attack on a mining convoy in November that killed nearly 40
people.
The country
was once a pocket of relative calm in the Sahel region, but its home-grown
insurgency has been amplified by a spill over of jihadist violence and
criminality from its chaotic northern neighbour Mali. - Africa
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