{Twelve soldiers have been killed and two are missing after an attack by Islamist militants near Burkina Faso’s border with Mali, the army has said.}<\/p>\n
Insurgents who carried out the attack did so on pick-up trucks and motorbikes, waving black flags.<\/p>\n
The soldiers were in the area to guard Burkina Faso’s long and porous border with Mali, where a number of Islamist groups are active.<\/p>\n
No group is reported to have claimed responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n
However al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is based in the Sahara Desert between Mali, Niger and Algeria and has attacked west African countries.<\/p>\n
In January AQIM claimed to have killed 29 people – many of them foreigners – in a hotel attack in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.<\/p>\n
Soum Province High Commissioner Mohamed Dah told the AFP news agency that Friday morning’s attack – about 260km (160 miles) from Ouagadougou – was “the biggest jihadist attack ever perpetrated” against the army.<\/p>\n
“They [the attackers] were heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-launchers. They opened fire at the depots, the tents and set fire to some of the vehicles,” he said.<\/p>\n
The “murderous” attack on “the army’s anti-terrorist force” has been denounced by President Rock Marc Christian Kabore in an address to the nation.<\/p>\n
“I strongly condemn this horrible attack which shows the cruelty of these perpetrators,” he said.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not revealed how many troops were injured.<\/p>\n
The army says it has sent reinforcements to the Mali border, an area where attacks and abductions are regularly reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Twelve soldiers have been killed and two are missing after an attack by Islamist militants near Burkina Faso’s border with Mali, the army has said.} Insurgents who carried out the attack did so on pick-up trucks and motorbikes, waving black flags. The soldiers were in the area to guard Burkina Faso’s long and porous border […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31152"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31152"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}