More than 100 people were killed in an apparent Islamist terror attack in the West African country of Burkina Faso. Unidentified gunmen reportedly went door to door, gunning down unarmed civilians in a killing spree over the weekend, the media reports on Monday said.
The local authorities placed the official deal toll at 55, but Reuters and other news outlets put the actual number of fatalities between 100-165.
While the government and the media reports did not specify the actual motives behind the latest massacre, the region has seen a spate of similar jihad terror attacks in recent years. “Attacks linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group are soaring in Burkina Faso, particularly in the north,” The Associated Press noted.
The Muslim-majority country with a sizable Christian population is amid an Islamist mass killings and ethnic cleansing campaign. “Nearly 5,000 people have died over the last two years in Burkina Faso because of violence blamed on Islamic extremists. Another 2 million people have fled their homes, deepening the country’s humanitarian crisis,” the UK daily Guardian reported.
Reuters reported the latest massacre linked to Islamic terrorists:
Armed men killed at least 100 civilians in a rural district of northern Burkina Faso close to the border with Niger over the weekend, a security source said.No group immediately claimed responsibility, but the assault happened in borderlands where militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State are waging an insurgency. (…)There were differing accounts of the death toll. The security official said on Monday at least 100 people had died. A local source who did not wish to be named said the provisional tally stood at 165.Burkina Faso’s government spokesman, Lionel Bilgo, said 50 bodies had been found so far but that the figure was not final. Soldiers were going house to house looking for bodies, he said.Violence linked to Islamist insurgents has killed thousands and displaced millions across Burkina Faso and neighbouring Mali and Niger since 2015.
Burkina Faso, a former French colony, has a population of around 20 million, of which over 60 percent are Muslims and about 20 percent Christians.
The small landlocked African nation, roughly the size of Colorado, has witnessed a rise in jihad terrorism since the formation of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) in 2015. The ISGS owes allegiance to the global Islamic Caliphate created in Syria around that time. The Islamic State-affiliate is also active in the neighboring countries of Mali and Niger.
From Sudan in the north to Mozambique in the south, Sub-Sahara Africa in recent years has seen an emergence of terrorist groups with links to ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other international terrorist outfits and movements.
The most notorious among these terror groups has been Boko Haram based in Nigeria. The ISIS-affiliated terrorist outfit, with a strength of around 15,000 jihadi fighters, has killed thousands and displaced millions of people in western and central Africa.
Christians and non-Muslims across Africa are being forcefully converted to Islam or driven from their ancestorial lands. This multi-pronged jihad offensive is creating one of the biggest humanitarian crises on the African continent.
It is worth noting that Western liberals and mainstream media, otherwise obsessed with race and color, have been deafeningly silent on the mass killing of Africans at the hands of jihadis.
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