Abidjan: Burkina Faso’s government has declared two days of mourning starting Sunday, after 41 people were killed in an attack by suspected extremists in the restive north.
“The search mission in the area of an ambush by armed terrorist groups … has established 41 bodies. The President declared 48 hours of national mourning,” said a government statement issued on Saturday evening.
The government said the dead included members of an official self-defense force known as the Volunteers for Defense of the Motherland (VDP) set up to support the military.
The volunteers receive 14 days of training and are then sent on lightly armed patrol and surveillance missions.
Ladji Yoro, considered the leader of the VDP in Burkina Faso, was among the victims of Thursday’s attack, the statement said.
“The identification of the victims is still ongoing,” the government statement said.
According to local media, a convoy of merchants escorted by the VDP was ambushed near Ouahgouya, a town off the Mali border.
The attack was the deadliest since mid-November when 57 people, including 53 lingers, were killed.
Like its neighbors Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught in a spiral of violence since 2015, attributed to armed terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and Daesh.
The fighting has killed at least 2,000 people and displaced 1.4 million.
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