The army confirmed on Monday that at least 51 troops are dead after a Friday ambush in northern Burkina Faso. The attack is one of the most tremendous documented death tolls from a single attack since the region became a hub for terrorist activities.
The event took place two days before France declared the end of its military operations in the West African country, where 400 French special forces had been stationed in 2015 to assist in the fight against an insurgency that had spread from neighbouring Mali.
The surprise attack by the bandits was in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso's Oudalan province, which borders Mali.
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Forty-three additional remains increased the preliminary death toll from the eight reported earlier on Monday, according to the army.
Although it did not expressly point the finger at anyone, it claimed that a counteroffensive air strike had killed roughly 160 "terrorists," up from the previous statement's estimate of 60.
Burkina Faso is one of the West African nations dealing with a jihadist insurgency that began in Mali following a Tuareg uprising in 2012.
Despite expensive international military deployments and United Nations peacekeeping efforts, violence has spread to nearby nations. Millions of residents are homeless, and thousands have died in the Sahel region south of the Sahara.
Since 2020, there have been two coups in Mali and two in Burkina Faso due to frustration with the lack of security, giving power to juntas that have strained ties with longstanding Western allies.
For the past year, relations between France and Burkina Faso had drastically deteriorated, reaching a breaking point in January when Ouagadougou gave its former colonizer one month to withdraw troops.
Following the Mali junta's decision to start collaborating with Russian military contractors, France withdrew its troops last year. Since then, several other nations have done the same.
According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the withdrawals have raised fears about the future of a conflict in which the frequency of Islamist strikes has more than doubled since 2020.
Following the murder of two of its employees on February 8, the medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres ceased operations in Burkina Faso last week to conduct a risk assessment.
