Burkina Faso, Africa: Around 10 police officers have been killed in an ambush by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso and several more officers are missing, security sources told AFP on Tuesday. Burkina Faso has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency that has left at least 1,400 dead since 2015 and forced an estimated one million people to flee their homes. In recent years, the impoverished Sahel country been hit by increasingly brutal attacks by militants affiliated with the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda.
So far 10 lakh people have been displaced due to violence
“This clearly shows that the terrorist threat is not decreasing despite major ongoing military operations,” said Heni Nasaibiya, senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Violence linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State has ravaged Burkina Faso. So far thousands of people have died in this violence and more than one million people have been displaced. Fighting has intensified in recent months, and in April alone more than 50 people were killed in one week, including two Spanish journalists and an Irish conservationist.
