30 killed in eastern Burkina Faso attack

OUAGADOUGOU: Gunmen killed around 30 people at a livestock market in the eastern Burkina Faso town of Kompienbiga, local residents said Sunday, in an attack blamed by a security source on jihadists.

The assailants “burst into the market riding motorbikes and started shooting, especially at people who were trying to flee”, one resident said, estimating the death toll at around 30 from the attack on Saturday. A second resident said: “It´s hard to say how many people were killed. There were bodies in the market, and others in the bush. But he added: “More than 30 bodies were collected” after the attack. He said his brother was at the market at the time and he had had “no news” from him since. A local official put the death toll at “several dozen” including vendors and residents, while a security source said “armed terrorists” carried out the attack, while declining to estimate how many were killed. The attack came a day after a convoy of mainly shopkeepers escorted by a local self-defence unit came under fire in the north of the West African country, leaving 15 dead. The bloodshed in Loroum province was also blamed on jihadists.

The east and north of the former French colony are the hardest hit by attacks by jihadists, who have killed more than 900 people and caused some 860,000 people to flee their homes in the past five years.