Renson Mwakandana
On Christmas Day, a suspected Islamic terrorist strike claimed the lives of at least 10 individuals when their minibus collided with a roadside bomb in eastern Burkina Faso.
On Sunday afternoon, when the minibus approached the town of Bougui and the Niger border, it struck a landmine, according to a statement from Colonel Hubert Yameogo.
The rest of the people aboard the bus vanished, according to Colonel Yameogo, while the injured were transferred to the hospital in Fada N’Gourma, the largest town in the east. A Fada N’Gourma local who visited patients in the hospital on Sunday reported that several of the seriously injured had passed away and that everyone was in fear. The authorities are working to regain the area’s security and find the missing travelers.
For more than six years, the nation has been plagued by violence associated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State organization, which has claimed thousands of lives and uprooted about 2 million people.
Two coups took place this year as a result of the government’s inability to stop the assaults, with each junta leader promising to put security first. However, jihadists are still allegedly carrying out attacks and cutting off vast stretches of country.
Some of the hardest-hit areas of the nation have been the east and the Sahel, where jihadis have surrounded cities and are preventing citizens from traveling freely.
The Associated Press was given access to an internal security report for aid organizations that described the incident on Sunday as occurring the day after another mine exploded in the east, between the villages of Ougarou and Matiacoali, injuring five troops. According to the investigation, an apartment close to a mining site was the target of the mine.
