generalspeaking

Saturday, November 09, 2019

Islamist Jihadists in Burkina Faso

"The three buses which were shot ... there were so many dead. It was over 100. We were on the ground."
"We saw everything. [Of the people on his bus] only three of us survived."
Abel Kabore, 35, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

"These were the last prayers we were praying. I pretended I was dead -- that was all I could do [to avoid death]."
"I saw one body facing up. I knew him. He looked untouched and I called out to him but he didn't answer."
"Then I touched him and I knew he was dead."
Massacre survivor of attack on fifth bus in attacked convoy

"People were trying to go back into the buses. I tried to run away into the bush, and saw that they [the attackers] went back onto the buses, opened the doors and tried to kill everyone."
Bakary Sanou 36, injured survivor

Soldiers in Burkina Faso crossing a road.

Photo: Soldiers in Burkina Faso where the security situation has deteriorated in recent months. (AFP/ FILE photo: Issouf Sanogo)

Parts of Burkina Faso is embroiled in a three-year-old insurgency. But it is also roiled by Islamic militants whose violence and criminality has spilled over its border from its northern neighbour Mali, where Islamist jihadists claiming unity with Islamic State have stricken the country in their fierce determination to bring Islamic sharia into Mali and then proceed outward to its neighbours spreading terror, threatening, looting, and killing in the name of Islam.

A Canadian mining company's workers travelling in a bus convoy encountered the desperation of struggling for survival when attackers, according to survivor Abel Kabore, some speaking a foreign language, shouted "Allahu akbar!", raked three buses full of workers with bullets in the wake of their security vehicle preceding the buses and guaranteeing their security, blew up when it hit a landmine. The first two buses in the convoy eluded the attack, and drove on, unscathed.

Mr. Kabore spoke of his experience from a hospital bed in the Bogodogo District Hospital in Ouagadougou, one of the fortunate workers who survived the calamitous attack. One survivor working for Australian mining services provider Perenti, described his experience in the fifth bus, a kilometre distant from the exploded security vehicle, where gunmen had the bus under fire for an hour, finally boarding the bus to execute any survivors. He had played dead, and survived, terrified but alive.

According to a security source from the mining sector, the convoy was conveying around 250 workers. Dozens of those people remain unaccounted for, compared to the casualty list of 38 dead and 60 wounded, compiled by Burkina Faso authorities who appear, for reasons entirely their own, to be downplaying the number of deaths. Business as usual, rather than disrupt income-generation prospects for one of the poorest countries in Africa.

The Boungou mine workers in eastern Burkina Faso, operated by gold miner Semafo suffered an immense catastrophe, and that much is undeniable. According to Perenti, 19 of its workers died in the attack, while 20 were sent to hospital for treatment of their injuries. Perenti employees worked for the company's African Mining Services unit, contracted by the Canadian Semafo mine; all protecting their interests in the country, as 29 victims were formally identified.

Burkina Faso public prosecutor Harouna Yoda stated that his government had opened an investigation into the incident targeting the Boungou mine located about 355 km from Ouagadougou, where Semafo has suspended operations while the mine site is being secured. The attack appears to have been predicted by a statement issued by Islamic State after the death of its 'caliph' Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, when a message reading "Do not be happy America. Don't you see, America, that the [Islamic] State is now on the threshold of Europe and Central Africa?"