Five dead in Burkina bomb attack

OUAGADOUGOU: Five people, four of them police, were killed when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device (IED) in Burkina Faso, security sources said Saturday.

The attack happened in the eastern town of Boungou, located in a region that has seen an upswing in jihadist violence in recent months.

"A police vehicle on an escort mission struck a makeshift bomb in Boungou, killing four police," a source said, without specifying who was responsible for the attack.

The police team was escorting workers employed at a local gold mine, the source added.

Another security source told AFP that a civilian had also died in the blast.

Burkina Faso has been battling jihadist attacks over the last three years, beginning in the north of the country but now spreading to the east, near the border with Togo and Benin.

In August six people, five of them police, died in an attack in the region under similar circumstances. In all, around 40 members of Burkina´s security forces have been killed in IED attacks since August.