Suspected Islamist terrorists on Friday killed dozens of people in twin attacks on the French embassy in Burkina Faso and the country’s military headquarters while a regional meeting on anti-jihadist forces was ongoing.
The Burkinabe government said the attack on the military was a suicide car bombing and that a planned meeting of the G5 Sahel regional anti-terrorism force may have been the target.
Officials from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger were at the meeting, representing the G5 Sahel nations who have launched a joint military force to combat jihadists on the southern rim of the Sahara.
Eight members of the armed forces were killed by the blast and the parallel attack on the French embassy, while 80 were wounded, said Security Minister Clement Sawadogo. The minister said eight attackers had been shot dead.
“The vehicle was packed with explosives” and caused “huge damage”, Sawadogo said, adding that it was a suicide attack.
Three security sources, two in France and one in West Africa, told the French news agency AFP that at least 28 people were killed in the attack on the military HQ alone.
French government sources said there were no French casualties and described the situation in Ouagadougou as “under control”.
“Our country was once again the target of dark forces,” President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a statement.
French President Emmanuel Macron telephoned his Burkinabe counterpart Kabore to express solidarity and send his condolences to the families of the slain security force members, his office said.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is on a visit to neighbouring Mali, “strongly condemned” the attack while UN chief Antonio Guterres called for an “urgent and concerted effort” to improve stability in the Sahel.
France has deployed 4,000 troops to support the G5 Sahel joint force. On 21 February, two members of the French counter-terrorism force were killed by a landmine near Mali’s border with Niger and Burkina Faso. Twelve French soldiers have died since the campaign — called Operation Barkhane — was launched in August 2014.
The United Nations also has a 12,000-strong peacekeeping force in Mali called MINUSMA, which has taken heavy casualties. Four UN peacekeepers were killed by a mine blast on Wednesday in the centre of the country.
