Sixty people were arrested in the north of Burkina Faso in an operation targeting terrorist bases, the army said on Wednesday.
Counter terrorist forces launched the security operation on July 8 to search suspicious areas in the region, which borders Mali to the north and Niger to the east.
“This work with the support of the air force allowed the dismantling of terrorist bases and the arrest of a hundred suspicious individuals,” a statement from the army said.
“After verification, 60 of them were transferred to the police and the others were released.”
Three army members were injured during the operation.
In the same region two people, including the chief of a village, were killed by armed gunman on Tuesday night after being abducted two weeks earlier, the interior ministry said.
The body of the chief of Hocoulourou village, which is near the border with Mali, and another local were discovered near each other.
“These executions were perpetrated by unidentified armed individuals who disappeared back into the wild after their crimes,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Long spared by the armed groups active in the Sahel, Burkina Faso’s border regions with Mali and Niger have both been the scene of regular attacks by jihadist groups over the past three years.
In May, more than 200 people including some suspected terrorists were arrested during a joint security operation between Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana and Togo.
Source: AFP
