Al-Qaeda-linked Group Claims Deadly Attack on Burkina Faso Soldiers

In Summary

• JNIM, an al-Qaeda-linked group, claims responsibility for the June 11 attack.
• Over 100 Burkina Faso soldiers killed, making it one of the deadliest attacks on the country's army.
• Burkina Faso has recruited 50,000 volunteers with minimal training, making them vulnerable.
• Similar violence is seen in Niger and Mali, affecting the stability of the Sahel region.
• The conflict has killed thousands and displaced over two million people in Burkina Faso.

DETAILS

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso- An armed group linked to al-Qaeda, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), has claimed responsibility for an attack on June 11 that killed more than 100 Burkina Faso soldiers in the Mansila area near the border with Niger, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

On Sunday, SITE quoted a JNIM statement saying that five days ago “fighters stormed a military post in the town, where they killed 107 soldiers and took control of the site.” Several videos shared online by JNIM showed raging gunfire around the army base. Another video displayed ammunition, dozens of weapons, and at least seven captured Burkina Faso soldiers.

June’s reported attack is one of the deadliest suffered by the West African Sahel nation’s army.

Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told Al Jazeera that the government is trying to fight the armed groups but has not recruited professional soldiers to do so. “They recruited 50,000 volunteers, many of whom got only a short period of training. So they’re kind of vulnerable to losses and it is not very efficient, unfortunately. Almost every day now, there are incidents like this,” he said.

“Right now you have 50-60 percent of [Burkina Faso’s] territory which is outside government control … The government is trying hard, they’re buying weapons, they have a military partnership with Russia but they’re not very successful.”

Niger and Mali are also struggling to contain fighting linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS). The unrest is threatening the stability of the Sahel region as armed groups, who control swathes of territories in Burkina Faso and Mali, use them as bases to target southern coastal countries. Laessing noted that while Mali and Niger have similar problems, their countries are much bigger.

“Burkina Faso is the smallest of the three and very densely populated … Whenever the army attacks, you have many more civilian victims, that makes it so brutal,” he said. Over more than a decade, armed groups have killed thousands and displaced more than two million in Burkina Faso.

Moreover, the country has topped the recent Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) list of the world’s most neglected displacement crises. The violence killed more than 8,400 people last year, double the number of deaths from the previous year, according to the NRC. About two million civilians were trapped in 36 blockaded towns across Burkina Faso by the end of 2023.