Burkina Faso cancels Xmas celebration, as 35 civilians, 7 soldiers killed after double jihadist attack

Christmas celebrations have been halted in the West African country of Burkina Faso after at least 35 civilians, mostly women, were killed alongside seven soldiers and at least 80 armed fighters in the Soum province following a double jihadist attack.

Tuesday’s double attack on a military base and Arbinda town in Soum province, in the country’s north is one of the deadliest assaults to hit Burkina Faso in nearly five years of violence, the military said in a statement on Wednesday.

“A large group of terrorists simultaneously attacked the military base and the civilian population in Arbinda,” the army chief of staff said in a statement.

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“The heroic action of our soldiers has made it possible to neutralise 80 terrorists,” President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said. “This barbaric attack resulted in the death of 35 civilians, most of them women.”

Burkina Faso, which is bordering Mali and Niger, has seen regular attacks – hundreds have been killed since the start of 2015 when violence began to spread across the Sahel region.

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