Attack In BurkinA: The Three Missing Europeans Were “executed”

The three Europeans who disappeared after an attack on Monday in eastern Burkina Faso – two Spaniards and an Irishman – “were executed by terrorists,” a senior Burkinabe security official told AFP on Tuesday. “It is very unfortunate, but the three Westerners were executed by the terrorists,” said the official. “The people in images released by armed groups have been identified as the three Westerners who were missing since yesterday” Tuesday, he added.

Following the attack on an anti-poaching patrol

Spain confirmed on Tuesday the disappearance of two of its nationals after the attack Monday in the day of an anti-poaching patrol composed of Burkinabe soldiers and forest guards, accompanied by trainers and Western journalists, on the Fada N axis. ‘Gourma-Pama, in eastern Burkina Faso. “Two Spanish citizens who were in Burkina Faso are missing,” sources at the Foreign Ministry told AFP. The Spanish authorities “are in permanent contact with the authorities of Burkina Faso (…) in order to locate these two Spaniards” and “regularly inform the families” of the two disappeared, they added. According to local and security sources, an Irishman and a Burkinabé had also disappeared after this attack which had also left three wounded.

The two Spaniards and the Irish are “training journalists working on behalf of an NGO that works for the protection of the environment”, according to a security source from Burkina. The attack was carried out by armed men traveling in two pick-up vehicles and a dozen motorcycles, according to security sources, who specified that weapons and equipment, motorcycles, two pick-ups and a drone, had been taken away by the attackers.

Foreign hostage-taking

Several hostage-taking of foreigners have taken place in recent years in Burkina Faso, which has been facing increasingly frequent jihadist attacks since 2015. An Australian couple had been kidnapped in Djibo, on the border with Mali and Niger, on the night of January 15 to 16, 2016 during an action apparently coordinated with attacks in Ouagadougou. That night, jihadists opened fire in cafes, restaurants and hotels on Kwame-Nkrumah Avenue, a hotspot for Ouagadougou nightlife, killing 30 and wounding 71. The woman, Jocelyn Elliot, had been handed over by her captors to Nigerien authorities about a month after her kidnapping. She then returned to Burkina Faso before returning to Australia. The man is still missing. In December 2018, an Italian-Canadian couple had disappeared on the road between Bobo-Dioulasso and Ouagadougou. He had been released in neighboring Mali, after more than a year in captivity. A few months earlier, in September 2018, an Indian and a South African were kidnapped from the site of a gold mine in Inata, in northwestern Burkina Faso, then released.

More and more abuses in Burkina Faso since 2015

Burkina Faso, bordering Mali and Niger in the grip of jihadist attacks, has also been a regular victim since 2015. First concentrated in the north of the country, bordering Mali, the atrocities attributed to jihadist groups, including the Group Support for Islam and Muslims (GSIM) affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS), then targeted the capital and other regions, notably the east and north-west. Since 2015, the violent actions of the jihadists have left more than 1,200 dead and more than a million displaced, fleeing areas of violence.